


The Winner Takes It All

by badluckvixen13 (alteringviews)



Series: Media Series [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, BAMF Stiles, Bottom Derek Hale/Top Stiles Stilinski, Breaking Up & Making Up, Car Accidents, Chef Stiles, Coffee Shops, Demisexuality, Derek Hale Deserves Nice Things, Derek Hale is Bad at Feelings, Derek Has Issues, Domestic Derek Hale, Drinking to Cope, F/M, Friendship, Good Peter, Hurt Derek, Hurt Stiles, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by..., Jealous Derek, M/M, Motorcycles, Multi, Mutual Pining, Nice Peter, Other, Pack Feels, Past Kate Argent/Derek Hale, Past Lydia Martin/Jackson Whittemore, Pining Derek, Pining Stiles Stilinski, Post Hale Fire, Sassy Peter, Sexual Tension, Singer Lydia, Singer Stiles Stilinski, Slow Build Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Switching, Top Derek Hale/Bottom Stiles Stilinski, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, YouTube
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-08-07
Packaged: 2018-04-11 23:42:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 60,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4457021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alteringviews/pseuds/badluckvixen13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The “Alpha-Pack” is a group of teenagers in undergrad who believe that love is a game. Between frat parties, sorority gatherings, and college-age drinking, there is plenty of variety. Isaac, Aiden, Ethan, Erica, and Derek try to win by gaining as many “scores” as possible as an addition to their pack camaraderie. Stiles is one of Derek’s trophies and he can’t let it go because someone just playing a game shouldn’t have three o’clock in the morning soul-searching conversations with their prey. He needs answers and closure, so he has a plan—become part of the “pack” and make Derek notice him. It works…almost too well as Stiles’s method of playing change Derek and Stiles himself changes him. While Stiles is fighting to keep his head on straight and Derek is fighting to figure out if his head was ever on straight, members of the pack begin to realize that love is a very different game than the one they’d been playing. And Derek most of all realizes that sometimes you need to lose to win.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sticks and Stones, Chains and Whips

**Author's Note:**

> BadLuckVixen13 (I don't have the energy to make another account anywhere when I can't even manage the accounts I have properly!) will be writing most of the Sterek Media Series on alteringviews's account. 
> 
> Inspired by “The Winner Takes It All” by Diana Anfimova on Youtube
> 
> Author Warning: I have never watched a single episode of Teen Wolf, but Stiles and Derek and Sterek in general has captured my muse and put his brawny, delicious self into a choke hold with no hope of being free any time soon.

It’s the first night of the rest of his life and Peter is awake when he stumbles in around dawn. He feels as empty as the last bottle of vodka at the party. He smells like sweat, sex, alcohol and self-loathing, but he doesn’t have enough alcohol in his system for his stomach to be turning over and his insides to be shaking. They are currently threatening to spill out onto the floor of their shared loft in a monstrous puddle of angst and badly managed depression. It’s anger and rage and a bitter triumph that tucks it all down, mutes it all so he can pretend it isn’t there, but he isn’t drunk enough to believe it or cry and he isn’t sober enough to put all of his walls up either. He should have drank more if he was going to feel like this.

But this… this is easier he thinks. Fucking faceless strangers, pulling his pleasure from them over and over again and walking away, always being the one to walk away, is easier than ever giving them the chance to walk away from him. It’s safer for him if he’s always the one to leave because it means he isn’t the one destroyed and laying in pieces on the ground. He wants to pretend that this was his idea and not some twisted psychosis of what she left of him, but he isn’t dumb. And, more importantly, neither is Peter.

“Derek,” he said tilting his head, sitting on the stairs that lead up to the second floor and then tilting it to look at Derek directly, “Seriously?”

Derek looks at him and grins. It’s that empty twisted, pain-drunk grin that Peter never thought he’d see on his nephew’s face. To be honest, he didn’t expect Derek to be able to do it, but that goes to show what a little Hale tenacity and a whole lot of emotional pain could do for a man like Derek. He wore it all like armor now. The fire, the break up, the hurtful words that had battered his pride and numbed him were all scratches and gashes turned inward for only his eyes. The other side is a perfectly gleaming surface, the perfect shield against feeling anything about it. They both know it’s just a pain so overwhelming that it’s killed his senses and Derek is stabbing the wound that’s gone numb just to feel something because to feel empty is to be as empty as he is and he can’t face that truth right now.

“You said…”

“This isn’t what I meant, Derek,” he said and sighed. “But if you’re a Hale, so there’s no stopping you. I just hope you don’t hollow yourself out before you realize how badly this could end.”

Derek snorted. Hollow himself out?, he thought. Wasn’t it a bit too late for that? He’d felt nothing, fucking that girl stupid on the bench at the back of the party. The girl who’s name he can’t remember, too drunk but not drunk enough not to remember her face and how she’d looked so disarmed beneath him. Too something to remember what it was to feel alive while having sex… He’d made sure she’d got home safely and started drinking right after, trying to get rid of the taste of her of the feel of her on his skin. He hadn’t told her his name and he didn’t ask for hers though she’d offered it. She’d been eyeing him all night and it was as good as a start as any. Peter had said that the best way to get over someone was to get under someone else. Well he’d gotten on top of her, so now what?

There was no absolution, no forgiveness, no _freedom_ \--just a bitter orgasm that left him feeling sick. He cursed stepping into the shower not even an hour later and crawling into bed. Hollow? He’d been hollow, but at least he could feel the pleasure. Pleasure was safe, it didn’t mean anything. It never meant anything. It was all just a game, just a stupid game that he would be damned to lose again….

That had been what he thought after that blonde demon had cleaned him out of all feeling and left him as empty as a chalk line a mere month before. He’d thought the rage would fill him up, or at least the sorrow, but no. The pleasure, the chase, and the safety of that pleasure and pleasure only is what filled him up, stood him up and made him face each day. He’d gained a reputation and women flocked to him for a taste and a hope that maybe they could win his heart. But it was always the taste first, a chance to get naked with him and his body—just his body, never with him. They filled his time and he kept their disarmed faces like strawman stuffing inside, filling out his limbs, replacing the rage bit by bit. One day he’d be able to replace the sorrow, but that hadn’t begun to happen yet either.

Then there was Erica, so battered in her sexuality that she’d need someone to tell her that it was alright. That she had power, that she mattered, and she had the right to want what she wanted. He wasn’t in the best place to tell her how she mattered or what it was that mattered really, but the first time she had sex as hard and as fast and as deep as she wanted, the first time she’d tasted the power that was her right, she’d smiled. That smile, that truly genuine smile had been enough to convince him that maybe he was on to something. Her heart was closed, but slowly her pride was coming back together and that was better than nothing. She became a force of nature, not to be reckoned with, only endured screaming and praying that she hadn’t fucked you completely out of your mind as you lay quaking in your skin. Derek was immensely proud of her in an oddly brotherly way.

Then there was Isaac, who reminded him so much of Erica it scared him. He was so broken down, powerless, mindless almost that giving him the tools to steady himself, giving him tools of power of persuasion and always creating an upper hand for yourself, of using your scars like shield… He’d stood up and realized that he could be charming, could be powerful, could be everything he hadn’t been given the chance to be before. Isaac had become the kind of dream on legs that left you quaking and feeling guilty. The one that you only related to friends in the private confines of a dark bedroom where no one can see the way you blush when you remember how good it was.

Aiden and Ethan had been much of the same. Without family in a strange city, gripping each other to the nail for stability, they needed family, community, a sense of control and Derek had given them all of that. He’d given all of them that and in so had begun to fill a bit more of himself with something that wasn’t just rage and hurt and raw agony.

Peter shook his head some days saying things like, “This isn’t exactly how I expected you to evade self-destruction, but fine.”

Derek didn’t want to hear it most days. Peter was a painful reminder of the mother he’d lost, of his uncles and aunts, of everyone that hadn’t made it out of that fire. It had been the two of them since then and while Peter annoyed the shit out of him most days, he could never stay angry at the man. Peter was the only family he really had left besides the rag tag group of players that he’d assembled.

“Alpha pack,” Erica had named them one day with a grin and looked to Derek and his scruff. “Cause you’re the wolf man.”

Derek snorted, of course he was the wolf man, but the more she used it, the more it grew on them until one day Derek humored her.

“I’m the alpha,” he said and she’d squealed with delight, the others had snorted but bowed in the most sarcastic way possible and demand that he make them lunch.

It made them feel a little closer, a little more exclusive, more protected. And now, months later, it was just a thing. He hadn’t intended to think about the game or the pack or really anything the night he met the twink. It was just supposed to be a night out at the 24 hour coffee shop on campus to get some work done because the library would be too crowded. The man was standing there, talking with the barrista about the machine that was being used to create his drink. It seemed like an interview or a conversation between colleagues, but as the man in front of him made grabby, pale, delicately long fingers making grabby hands at the cup.

“Say please,” the barrista teased.

“ _Please_ ,” the man breathes, his voice low and breathy—a hot lick up Derek’s spine. “I have sampling due tomorrow. _Please._ ”

The woman laughs and places the cup in the man’s hands. When the man turns around, a jolt of desire hits him so damn hard he almost stumbles. His eyes are huge, open and bright looking up at Derek with brown eyes so deep he wants to drown in them. The face is twinkish, pale and dotted with moles, but he’s not unhealthy looking, just made up of that creamy complexion that had missed Derek’s entire family. Dotted with moles, he looks too young to be in a coffee shop with worried red lips shaped in a cupid’s bow that could spell trouble if he thought about all the sinful things that mouth could do and say.

“Sorry dude,” he said, stepping around Derek and hurrying off to the table piled with books.

He didn’t miss the rush of red in the other’s cheeks as he stepped up to the barrista and ordered hot chocolate with hazelnut syrup and only whole milk. It’s warm and perfect in his hand as he settles near the pale student and contents himself to watching him.

The flush is still there, but the coffee is disappearing at an alarming rate. He’s fidgeting, plugging in headphones that cover his ears into a computer that doesn’t match the rest of him. His backpack isn’t in pieces, but it isn’t new either, probably recycled from high school. His converse have seen better days for sure, his jeans are ripped, and he’s wearing a t-shirt that’s been washed at least million times. The sweatshirt is excessively big for him, but none of that matters because his mouth is doing sinful things to itself between his teeth as he clicks with alarming speed across his computer screen and opens at least three books. How he can keep track of all the differences, Derek has no idea, but watching is interesting.

The moment there’s a pencil involved, Derek has to stop watching because the twink has a serious oral fixation and Derek had already started becoming obsessive over his mouth. Derek works on his papers and business projections until he has a good draft of all of them and finishes up a lab report before leaving.

The twink--why did he avoid thinking his name like it would break him? It was just one word, one small word yet seemed to be an armed warhead in his hands, a grenade with the pin removed in his palm. Before he could utter or think the name, his frantic pain erased it and given him a general title—shoving the memory alongside Kate’s for comparison. He’d never found it hard to do so before, standard procedure so he doesn’t drop a name, but the twink’s name is pushing, pounding on the epithet so hard it’s making his ears ring. One day, he’ll be able to think it, to say it without pain just like he could with Kate’s now. For now, however, he’s the twink.

He runs into the twink at least three more nights before they exchange names… Another four before they exchange numbers and are hanging out regularly… They’ve been talking for months when Derek kisses him the first time, a four months and two weeks before their kissing turns into a make-out session that makes Derek shake like a fucking _virgin_. They talk all through summer break, sharing info about their lives, what they do over the summer before Derek sees him again. He’s wearing workout clothing, jogging across campus when he sees him and Derek thinks about pulling him into his car, laying down the seats and licking the sweat off his neck. He’s never been so damned turned on in his life.

Even _Kate_ hadn’t had this effect on him… And since when could he bear to say her name without the familiar heart-wrenching feeling to follow?

It’s the first week of classes when Derek gets him naked and wrecks him all night. The twink had invited him over for dinner. The food had been excellent and the chocolate cake even more so. It was made even better when Derek had the opportunity to eat it off smooth creamy skin. He’d been right, the twink was that creamy all over and oh had Derek relished the chance to taste.

In the hours that he focused on showing Stiles exactly what he missed by waiting to have sex that long, he pushed every boundary that he thinks he has (and finding a few that he didn’t know he didn’t have) between his experience and the twink’s own brand of untried sexuality. By the end, Derek learns fully why the French phrase for orgasm was _le petit mort_ as he could only classify the night as a near death experience. Manhandling is a definite yes for the twink. He whimpers at every rough tug of Derek’s hands getting him undressed, spinning them so he’s up against the wall, picked up and moved around like a doll. Derek find he enjoys it more because the twink enjoys it immensely. Being fucked is a yes for the twink. He quakes as Derek opens him up with slow precise fingers and tongue. He begs for it harder when the initial confused sensations dull to just pleasure. Derek finds that being fucked is a yes for him too when the twink asks him and is so damn eager to make it good, opens Derek up even slower than Derek had opened him up. The twink is packing something bigger than Derek had imagined and he isn’t sure which he enjoyed more or if the fact that the twink’s pleasure was just that contagious.

Blow jobs, rimming, fingering, oral fixation kink—yes, yes, _yes_ , the twink had a talent for sucking cock. Like he was born to do it and so damn eager to be good at it all. Hell, Derek had discovered his own enjoyment of it. He’s the first person to make Derek come screaming in his entire life and together they fly over the edge of consciousness and exit the slowly waking world.

Derek wakes up slowly the next morning, rising out of the abyss and watches Stiles sleep for a moment. He’s warm and hungry. He feels soft and content…It’s then that he realizes that it meant something much more than a long night of fucking. A lot more because he hadn’t been thinking about sex for the last few months, but getting the twink into bed had become the single most important thing in life, separating Derek from certain combustion, all through dinner. For a virgin, he was a fucking sex god and if Derek could wake him up for another—

He pulls away from touching the sleeping man as if his pale flesh is a burning surface and Stiles sleeps on. Kate’s last words surge into the forefront of his mind and he remembers that it _never_ means anything. He’s just a pretty face, just a nice warm body. He gets out of the bed, gets dressed and runs. He’s only lucky that the man’s roommate hasn’t returned, or maybe he lives alone, but Derek runs to his car, the taste of Stiles and himself mingled together with the remnants of the chocolate cake he’d eaten off of pale skin, makes his head spin and he curses, shaking his head. He wants to curl back up with Stiles, to text some excuse, to do something other than run.

He’s already in pieces and his eyes are burning. _Fuck._ This couldn’t happen. This wouldn’t happen. If he had common sense…Well, he wouldn’t be there would he? He would have never kissed the twink, never learned his name, never gotten his phone number, never let him invite him up for dinner, never started it at all. What was he thinking? Him, in a relationship? In a functional relationship? He’d never be worthy of that. Not with someone who was so damn strong and beautiful.

Derek was a murderer, a pretty face, a useful body…that’s all. And that’s all he’d ever be. And all the other could be was another on a long list… the twink would thank him one day, when he’s curled up next to someone not so fucked up. They’ll laugh about it and the other man in the twink’s future would hold him and tell him that if they ever met, he’d kick Derek in the nuts.

Derek grits his teeth at the thought of any one else’s hands on him. _Son of a bitch._

He thinks that he just needs more sex, something else, he needs to lose his mind in someone else, so he goes out with the pack to some party the next night and gets a girl into the broom closet. It’s quick, fast, she comes apart in his arms, but the orgasm barely feels there for him. He isn’t even sure if he came or not and it doesn’t seem to matter. She doesn’t taste like anything, waxy fake, no honesty, no need, no openness and no _crème._

The next girl is pale with short brown hair and he cum then thinking she’d be cuter with moles.

_Fuck._


	2. I May Be Bad (But I'm Perfectly Good At It)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A glimpse into pack life, Aiden and Lydia's relationship, and friendly feels all around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: R.I.P. Sheriff Stilinski
> 
> Also, completely unbeta'd... I've been trying to do the corrections, but you know how that goes.

It’s Sunday morning two weeks after he’d last seen the twink and everyone is filing in in their usual order. The twins, Erica, Isaac, Derek hardly looks up from the batter he’s making to look at them. It’s usual pack business to come on Sunday after a long week of playing, winning, and others to compare scores for the week. That usually lasts all of five minutes, before they talk about everything else they have going on. He can see them all growing out of the life of sleeping through large quantities of people as fast as possible.

 “Alright,” Isaac starts. “Threesome with twins.”

Erica rolls her eyes, “Yeah. I’ve done that already. _Twice_ with two different sets of twins.”

Isaac snorts, “Yeah, but not in the park.”

They regard him nodding with approval, “Nice… I’m impressed.”

Erica nods, inspecting her nails, “In the middle of the courtyard, actually.”

Derek looks up then and Aiden howls, “Hah! I think she’s got you beat on the threesome front. Erica definitely wins the most Creative Win.”

Erica nods and pats Isaac’s arm, “It’s okay, Isaac, you’ll just have to try again some other time.”

He rolls his eyes; he wouldn’t ever try to really dethrone Erica in terms of Creative and Extenuating Circumstances. While Erica had the record, Derek held that title firmly. No one had managed to have sex right after a shoot-out in the remains of a burnt out loft still bleeding.

“Erica’s still reigning unless anyone else has something to contend with.”

Aiden’s got the highest numbers of the three of them, having been invited to the sorority house. Ethan is sure to correct him to add the red head from one of his classes to the list. Aiden’s thanks lack any sincerity as far as Erica is concerned, but she doesn’t comment on it. Ethan was in the second running after the very long weekend of frat boy parties.

“Derek?”

He smirked looking up and pouring batter into the skillet, “Yeah?”

“Nothing exciting in the world of Derek Hale?”

“Come on Alpha,” Erica grins looking at him. “I know you’ve got something juicy.”

Derek makes a sound, but apparently committed he says, “A music, culinary and criminal psych major.”

The words hit him like a punch to the guy, but he powers through it, make breakfast as if there’s nothing special about it. The twink’s laughing face, the way he molested straws, the raw open desire and reverence in his eyes as he stroked Derek and thrusted--

Aiden let out a low whistle, “How the hell’d you managed that?”

Derek tilted his head thoughtfully and shoves everything from the last few months in a bag and labels it, “It took some work.”

Music majors were notoriously hard to get anywhere with, they and criminology students were up there in the apparently untouchable if only because they didn’t ever seem to exist outside of their buildings, their work and classes. Finding a rare gem like a triple major, a culinary, music, psych, triple major was something of a wonder.

“Wait,” Erica started. “He?”

Derek nodded and Isaac threw his head back, “Erica loses her throne at last!”

She blinked looking at Derek, her jaw dropped in amazement. If there was anyone she never minded losing to it was Derek, but there was something in Derek’s eyes that made her think there was more to it than that. He brought food to the table and asked about school, their classes, how the semester was progressing.

Erica is sure to watch Derek’s every reaction with the endearing insight that only she possessed. Aiden called it “Erica senses”. Derek knew it was just a learned talent from years of abuse. Isaac had it too, he was just less likely to talk about it. They shared a conspiratorial glance and watched him from the corner of his eyes. They were the only ones that knew the story of how he began to play the game.

They don’t bring it up and pretty soon, they’re splayed around Derek’s living room, chatting, doing homework and surviving college life. Aiden leaves first, grabbing his bag saying he’s got to meet up with someone for his engineering class. They hear the roar of his bike and Ethan tells him that it’s probably the red head that Aiden’s been talking about.

“Sealing the deal?” Erica asked.

Ethan shrugs, “Probably to end it. I’m pretty sure they’ve already had sex.”

Erica doubted that highly. The boys were playboys only so far as they weren’t in relationships. At the core of them, they were soft and cuddly and just waiting for the right person to crack open their shields and crawl inside. Derek would probably take the longest, but well worth it when it happened. Erica shook at the thought of whoever the person would be to essentially hug away all the things she distracts herself from.

Aiden arrives at Lydia’s apartment fifteen minutes later. He parks in front of her building, parks and climbs the stairs. She’s on the phone when she opens the door and looks at him flashing a smile.

“I’ve got to go, talk to you later, love you too Mom.”

Aiden stepped in and true to form, lifted her up, hands on her ass beneath the hem of her skirt to find her naked beneath. Well, that was new.

“Hmm, a gift? France made you frisky?”

“Thought it would make things a little easier since they never last until after we get things done. And it was Greece actually.”

Aiden spun them around, pressing her against the wall with a grin, “If you wanted to get things done, we could have met at the library.”

She laughed, “Not with you eye fucking me for hours at a time. Better to get it out of your—”

She groaned as his fingers slipped inside her, and he growled at how wet she was. Lydia had to be the most responsive woman he’d ever been with and the fact that she had humor and looked at him as more than a piece of meat made it that much better. She wanted him, Aiden. Not the body, or the bike, she wanted all of him and surprisingly he had no problem giving it to her… in all the ways that didn’t really mean anything.

“ _Aiden…_ ”

“Wet already, Lydia? Missed me?”

She bit her lip and pulled him to kiss her. His pants are undone and he’s in a condom on moments later, surging into her so her head knocked against the front door with each thrust. When the initial flurry of friction died down, her legs tightened around his waist and she rocks her body up as he pulls them away from the wall. Another thing that was all Lydia, the teasing and insane way she rides him as he stumbles through her apartment towards the bedroom he’s spent far too much time in to be safe. They collapse on the bed with an excited shriek and moan. He doesn’t know how long they stay connected, but when they’re done, they’re both out of breath and darkness has fallen outside. He’d gotten there around noon.

“So… you missed me huh?” Lydia asked and Aiden chuckled.

“Don’t go overseas anymore.”

Lydia hummed as she turns to look at him, their eyes meet for a moment. Aiden sees exactly what those words would mean and if she agreed, even jokingly. It’s too open, too intimate for Aiden’s taste so he sits up and moves to get dressed. Lydia worries her lip but she bites the words back because Aiden hasn’t promised anything. He hasn’t said anything about their relationship whatever it was now. She’d learned the hard way what it meant to assume that she was important without the words from the other party… hell, even the words meant nothing.

Lydia reaches for her robe before Aiden stops her and has her step into underwear. Her clothes have been collected off the floor and lain out beside her.

“Food,” he chides. “And if we eat here, I’ll have you bent over something. Guaranteed.”

“That enticing am I?” She says, drawing a manicured finger up her leg, slowly and enjoying the way his eyes follow it like a man possessed.

In a flash, she reaches out and pokes his nose with a grin. He’s shocked but shakes his head and glares.

“Vixen.”

She lets him dress her, the intimacy of it isn’t lost on her, but she doesn’t comment on the way his hands linger on her skin or the way he steal kisses and nips at her skin while dressing her. She doesn’t point out that he’s nuzzling her the way you do when you’re with someone officially, she doesn’t remind him of his reputation, because that’s not who he is when he’s here.

But then… who is he? And who the hell was she becoming?

She shudders and lets him lead her out of her bedroom towards the front door. He puts his helmet on her head and makes her climb on, his backpack hanging on the handlebars, hers strapped to her back. She wraps her arms around his waist comfortably and closes her eyes as he guides the bike through the city. They got to a Lydia’s favorite sandwich shop and surprisingly get work done between sharing a milkshake and eating. He teases her about her love for Dijon mustard and pumpernickel bread while she challenges him to eat something other than ciabatta. They play footsie under the table by accident which ends up turning into a tug of war. Aiden wins, trapping her booted feet between his ankles with a grin. He drops her off back at her apartment, walking her to the door and lingering too long not to be her boyfriend, but he doesn’t say anything more than “Goodnight Lydia.”

She wants to ask, she wants answers and to feel like she’s standing on solid ground, but she doesn’t. She tells him goodnight and locks the door behind her, wishing she was just a little less damaged, but she isn’t and that sucks. She walks to her computer to get her homework done and flit through Facebook. Stiles’s page is full of food and music. Scott and Kira’s page are practically the same with minor differences. They’re still out of country in Japan volunteering for something. Lydia’s page is a mess really. There are pictures from overseas, the beach and her lounging on it… Her phone rings and its her father with another bi-weekly call to make her feel like she’s loved. She knows it’s more so she won’t say anything untoward to the media about him… at least that’s what it feels like most days. She wakes up the next day to see the Facebook notification.

The Beacon Hills Police Department has a memorial page up for those that died every day of the month on the force in action or not. Stiles’s father, John Stilinski, is there today. The only one for this week, the only one for today. She swallows and knows that Stiles is probably curled up in his room watching all their old movies on his laptop, a picture of his father and mother there to keep him company. He won’t want to be bothered or called and in general they have agreed to let him be  but agree to come running if he ever does call. Her hand itches to call him, the way it does every year. She wants to hear his voice, wants to be near someone that understands her to the core, right now and Stiles is usually her go to. After his awkward long standing crush had ended, and he’d been there to help her get over Jackson with no intent to take advantage of the emotional roller coaster she was on (no matter how hard she’d tried to get him to), they’d become the closest of friends. And to his credit, he never brought up the way she’d practically thrown herself at him to just feel something.

Her phone rings again and its Stiles. The call doesn’t make it through the full ring.

“ _Hey,_ ” he sniffles. “ _Lyds? You busy?_ ”

“Never for you, honey.”

“ _Could you come over? I… I just need someone to talk to. I don’t think I can manage this year alone._ ”

“I’m on my way,” she tells him and gets up.

She packs a bag filled with goodies from her own cabinet, locks the door and heads downstairs to her car. The drive is short. She knows that even if everyone was back, he probably wouldn’t have called anyone else. Scott was awkward with tears and mourning, both of his parents and all immediate family still being alive. Kira and Stiles were close, but she hadn’t known the sheriff the way the rest of them did. Danny was the next on the list besides Lydia, if only because he was practically made of sunshine and rainbows. But the likelihood is that Stiles had something else to say, something else that was driving him to not be alone today.  They’re two islands alone in the sea of emotions that have become their lives through turmoil and loss.

They understand each other. After all, she has never been good enough for time from her father. Money always, time never. Her mother disdained the idea of her going to college, into engineering. She was “too pretty” to do that. She should have just married Jackson is what her mother thinks and Lydia had practically stopped talking to her for nearly a year after that argument.  She didn’t know what it was like to have a close relationship and then lose it, but she knew emptiness and trying to fill the void. Stiles had both of his parents, two of the closest people in his life, ripped from him with no warning. Stiles was still trying to fill that void as best he could with friends and work and activity. Lydia knew that feeling. They understood what it felt like to do everything you could and still not feel like it wasn’t good enough… that it would never be good enough. She knew the bruises that wall left to your pride and Stiles knew them too.

There was a reason they were such good friends.

When she arrived, he slid the door open and hugged her with no words. He’s damp from a shower and smells like the soap she’d brought him from Greece. He’s flushed and there are a number of red splotches across his body that look suspiciously like hickies.

“Oh honey,” she started, rubbing his back as he lets out a shuddering breath. “What happened?”

He shook his head and they went to the couch to curl up beneath the Beacon Hills Sheriff’s Department blanket he’d been given when the department buried his father beside his mother in accordance with his will. The loft smelled like baked goods. The living room table was covered with five different cakes decorated in accordance with their respective occasions. John’s birthday cake was German Chocolate with Stiles’s personal touch; the Chistmas Cake had fondant candy canes and snowmen on top of it. Thanksgiving’s cake was turkey. Claudia’s cake had lilies and roses finely crafted on top. She knows that he hasn’t slept.They were treats that Stiles only made on special occasions and still the man was regulated to two Stiles portioned slices. Scott wouldn’t call today, no matter how much he wanted to and Stiles was glad for that.

Scott, his best friend since forever, had a very set way of dealing with the world. His sense of relationships was almost fairytales. He and Kira had been together since high school after all, his first everything and that was it. They fought sometimes, but they always made up. Lydia and Danny had been through the sort of relationships that gave you perspective and a knowledge that he’d need because it had been amazing. It had been more than amazing, he tells her. She looks surprised when he tells her that he had sex with the guy.

“The guy you’ve been talking to since last year?” Lydia asked.

He nodded and Lydia grinned, “Stepping out of that shell, huh? Well, what happened?”

Stiles shrugged, “He left… before I woke up. No note, no text…Is that normal? We haven’t talked since then either…”

Lydia bit her lip, “No reply at all?”

He shook his head, “I know… he’s a busy guy. Going to school and training to take over the family business isn’t easy, but after months…we hadn’t skipped a day.”

Lydia thinks he already knows what she’s going to say and that the spread of sweets was just an attempt to make it better. She can practically see the walls closing in on him the way his hands shake and his words are tumbling wet and hurried.

“I just thought…”

Lydia nods and pulls him close, “I know… Point him out in a crowd and I’ll be glad to kick him in the nuts.”

Stiles nodded.

“And if he ever does decide to contact you again, you make him grovel. Bet you blew his mind, he needs time to collect himself.”  
Stiles flushed and nudged her, but there’s a small smile on his lips and that’s good enough. After a moment, Stiles cuts slices of cake and Lydia knows for sure she’s going to be sick by the end of the day, but they watch movies.

A knock sounds on the door and Stiles goes to answer it.

“Buddy!”

Stiles’s jaw trembles and he squeezes Scott to him so tight the other can barely breathe. Kira and Stiles come in, Danny’s just behind grinning and looking darker from his trip to Hawaii. They’d all miss the first few weeks of classes with good reason, but they were here a full week earlier than planned and on his couch, eating and filling the emptiness of the day.

“You haven’t packed at all?” Scott asks and Stiles rolls his eyes.

“Don’t be silly, I’m practically completely packed.”

“This is going to be so awesome!” Scott said. “I’m so looking forward to convenient taste tests.”

“We know where your priorities lie,” Kira said.

They’d agreed to move in together for a lot of reasons. Melissa had been worried about Stiles being alone because of his panic attacks, but mostly it would be cheaper to live together. While Stiles’s needs were being met between his small inheritance and substantial scholarships, Scott wasn’t so lucky as Melissa, while a single mother, wasn’t the only one on Scott’s applications. Agent McCall had ruined Scott’s chances of free education and hadn’t even offered to help. He’d insisted that he be included on Scott’s application as he was in fact his father, but the bastard had barely thrown a few hundred dollars towards Scott’s graduation. Stiles assumes that he’d been paying child support while apart and that was the main reason that Melissa had had to yield.

They talked about furniture and it was generally decided that they would keep all of Stiles’s furniture as Scott and Kira were moving out of dorms. They’d spring for beds of course and anything else, they’d figure out. They moved in and unpacked by Saturday with all of them pitching in. Stiles made dinner and they had their moving in party all at one time. It isn’t enough to make him forget at night, when he curls up and feels cold and empty, used and abandoned, but it’s enough to make him smile during the day.

There are people he has to smile for, people that will ask and pry and make it all come crashing around him again. So he smiles in public, he laughs and jokes and if Lydia is the only one to give him that reassuring look and smile, then that’s okay. He isn’t ready to talk about it yet. He may never be ready, but they’ll be there either way. Right now, that’s better than anything in the world.


	3. This is Not Fair, I Am Beyond Repair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles realizes that Derek is part of the Alpha Pack and Ethan realizes that Danny's connections may mean cavities. Uncle Peter begins to plot and the pack assembles to defend Erica from self-serving, chauvinist assholes.

A week later, Monday morning, Stiles wakes up alone, barely getting out of his sleep, eyes fluttering in the sunlight. The phantom of a leather clad figure escaping out the door makes him sit up quickly, but he remembers that he’s moved in with Scott, and the sliding front door was his old loft. The sheets don’t actually smell like vanilla and bourbon, but his mind won’t let him forget the scent. He’s washed his sheets at least three times since that night. He’s in his new apartment, the one he shares with Scott and Kira. Derek has never been there. It’s Sunday, and that night was two weeks ago. He’s alone in his old red t-shirt and sleep pants, not naked and warm, buried beneath a pile of blankets. He hadn’t seen Derek since they’d had sex. He’d texted, but with little to no reply to his invites for lunch or coffee.

Today, there’s a reply.

_I’m busy._

Stiles finds himself looking at the phone without much else to say so he replies.

And he slides out of bed, shaking his head free and then there’s a noise in the kitchen. His body jumps up and he runs to rescue whatever pot, pan, or surface Scott is about to ruin  only to find Scott sitting at the bar and Kira in the kitchen.

“Hey, buddy. You okay?”

Stiles sighed, “I thought you were going to try and cook.”

Scott wrinkled his nose, “Not in a million years.”

Stiles sends up a prayer and goes to get ready for class. They pile into Stiles’s jeep and walks down the lockered hallways of the converted section.

“What’s been going on, man? You’ve been… different.”

Stiles swallows and tells him that he had sex with the guy he’s been talking with. Scott’s eyes go impossibly wide and he stops him in the hallway.

“What? Was it good?”

Stiles flushed, “Yes.”

“Give me something better than that, Stiles. This is huge!”

“Alright, it was the best night of my life,” Stiles admitted to Scott. “Bar none.”

Scott nodded in shock, “But I haven’t seen him since.”

“You gonna try and call him? You guys were talking for a while, right?”

“He says he’s busy. I—”

“Watch it, doll,” a sultry voice comes, spinning to keep from tumbling them both to the ground.

When the world stops spinning, Stiles is bracing the arms of a blonde woman who looks like hell in high heels. She winks one mascara eye at him, lips red as blood, and struts on. He watches the woman, Erica Reyes his mind supplies, walk away and there’s something that makes his stomach turn. It’s the cut of her leather jacket, painfully familiar and the scent of vanilla and something like bourbon that hits his nose when she bumped into him.

 Scott lets out a low whistle and pats him on the shoulder, “Maybe your scent has changed or something.”

Erica Reyes, he knows her, and he wouldn’t say that was the reason that she winked at him at all. She’s the one who banged a member of the lacrosse team’s brains out for a whole weekend and then told him “it was fun” as a signal that it was over before they’d had anything serious.  Not to mention she was a flirt, bar none.

_“That bitch,” he’d said. “And they’re all like that. Erica called them the Alpha pack.”_

And after unloading everything he knew about them, he’d punched the wall and said that she could go fuck herself like the whore she was. Stiles thought he was just bitter as it didn’t sound like Erica had really led him on or even hinted that she was interested in him as a person. He’d probably planned on using her the way she used him and was just pissed that he’d been powerless at the end, because, essentially, his dick wasn’t bigger than hers. His eyes, maybe because he was in a daze, followed her down the steps and out to the front of the building to a familiar black Camaro. His heart stuttered as she greeted the driver and rounded the car to get in. She talks to him with the sort of animations that you use around someone close to you. From where he stood on the steps, he could see the aviator’s dark reflective lens and that handsome smile directed towards a group of people standing by the bike racks. The stubble that was impossibly soft, a permanent five o’clock shadow…

The jacket wasn’t hers… It had smelled like Derek. The driver was Derek…

Derek was picking up Erica Reyes…

Derek was a part of the “Alpha Pack” and Stiles…had been one of his trophies. His throat closes tightly and his eyes burn as the Camaro zips away and he feels the knowledge and the memories burning their way through him. _Busy,_ he thinks. _With who? Doing what?_ Stiles remembers how _busy_ they’d been that night and it was just one night. A man that went that hard for just one night was probably busy multiple times a day. He’s horrified at the fact that he’d been tricked. His blood runs cold at the thought that someone who could appear so genuine and talk to him about his family and all those things, to really dig to the core of himself could be so…

He shudders, his plaid long sleeve shirt and jeans isn’t enough, he needs a huge cup of scalding coffee with plenty of hazelnut and chocolate. He needs hugs and a blanket. He need to scream and write and sing and listen, and just curl up somewhere. His hands shake in that old familiar way and his arms are itching. He shakes his head. He needed to find Scott before it happened, before he did anything crazy, before he hyperventilated himself out of consciousness. The walls were closing in around him and he felt his breath coming in choppy pants.

He didn’t know. It wasn’t heartless. He’d never said anything about dating. It had been sex and while Stiles was putting the pieces together after a long night of endorphin highs… it was probably run of the mill for Derek. Stiles had been the virgin in the situation to intrigue, to sex, to sexual intrigue…He bet Derek laughed at him with his pack about the virgin he’d gotten into bed, who’d screamed and begged, the things he’d done, the things he’d let Derek do to him… He’d been the one who’d been so damn—

 _Shit,_ hadn’t he taken his meds this morning?

Adderall yes, anxiety and anti-depressants, yes… They weren’t working. Wasn’t it time for another dose?

He shook his head, no. It wasn’t. He’d just taken them all of a few hours ago. His next dose wasn’t until six—it wasn’t even noon yet. His hands shake and he’s thinking that just to be safe--

“You okay, buddy?”

He nods stiffly, but he can’t stomach food. He floats through his classes, thankful that he remembers to record them all.  He can’t think, running his hands through his hair, more than thankful that he’s made it back to the apartment and has a moment alone. He takes his medicine at his phone’s prompting and he’s a little more stable than earlier. Yet, even simple julienne cuts seem to allude him. He’s made this dish a million times before, but right now the seasonings are all muddled in his mind. Is it curry and turmeric or lemongrass? Was there supposed to be onions or coconut milk? Savory or mild? Spicy or sweet? His mouth tastes strangely like all his taste buds have been rearranged and he can’t taste anything but bitterness at the back of his throat. He stares at his cutting board. He’s supposed to be cooking, practicing for his final coming up…and eating. He has a private session with Chef Hale tonight. How’s he going to make it when he can’t taste anything?

When was the last time he ate? Had he eaten breakfast? He may have nibbled on something, maybe, but he didn’t remember. He sniffles a bit and wipes his tears on the sleeve of his sweatshirt.

 _Tears?_ He thinks and wipes again, but they won’t stop and he doesn’t understand—

_Derek’s hand trailed gently over the curve of his face, pupils blown, eyes hot and a devious smile._

_“I like my chocolate with crème,” he says and lifts Stiles’s chocolate sticky fingers to his lips and sucks._

Stiles shakes closing his eyes at the memory and feels his knees wobble as the tears stream. There’s no one home, no one due back for at least an hour, so he sets the knife down for a moment and leans over the cutting board. Hitting the button on the music station, he breathes in and lets the sound of Neon Hitch’s “Midnight Sun” play. He’s supposed to be rearranging it for a mash-up for his and Lydia’s project and he breathes deeply, letting himself sink into the song until everything clears and he can hold a knife properly.  Before he does so, he goes to the bathroom to wash his face and hands, to cool the red splotches and the puffiness around his eyes. When he looks more calm and feels less shaky, he returns to the kitchen. He’s still chopping vegetables when Scott comes home an hour later and takes a seat at the bar to peer eagerly into the kitchen.

“I know you’ve got a test coming up so… what are you practicing with? What’s for dinner?”

Stiles snorted, Scott was always a willing taste-tester, always had been even when Stiles didn’t realize that something’s didn’t go well with ranch dressing.

“We’re having Curry with Flare,” he said. “And jasmine rice.”

“Meat and rice, awesome.”

Stiles only shook his head, he was almost as bad as the Sheriff was, but no matter. With Scott there to chat with him, the thoughts were at bay for a moment, churning in the back of his mind, but mute enough that Stiles could pick up his usual rhythm in the kitchen. For Scott it was always a show to watch Stiles, handy with a knife Stiles, slice through ingredients and combine into something that was going into his stomach sooner rather than later. The curry came out fantastic and he was glad he decided to grind the herbs himself.

“Dude, you’re going to ace that final. It’s going to be awesome!”

Stiles grinned at the vote of confidence and told Scott to wash the dishes and clean up while getting ready for his eight o’clock culinary class. The professor, Peter Hale, was a snarky spirit, but after tasting Stiles’s chocolate cake had been more than willing to take him on for private lessons. The drive to the man’s apartment was short and well worth it as he grabbed his kitchen roll, his mother’s before she died, and headed up the stairs. When he arrived, Peter was dressed in his casual lounge wear and his expression significantly brightened.

“A face that won’t annoy me, come in.”

Stiles snorted, “I wouldn’t say that, Peter. Last time I checked I’m pretty annoying.”

“Not as annoying as my nephew, so you already win. We’re working on reductions tonight. I hope you brought other things to do.”

He did of course and it didn’t take long to get into the swing of the kitchen again. Peter, for all his snarky cantankerousness, was a fantastic chef and a fantastic teacher. The art of tomato sauce was the subject of the night and by ten o’clock he’d gotten through the majority of his music sampling.

“What is it, kid?”

Stiles looked up to find Peter regarding him with that gaze of ultimate scrutiny. He winced.

“Nothing serious.”

Peter snorted, “To keep your attention for that long and it’s not food, music, or the workings of the human mind under duress must make it serious.”

Stiles laughed, “It’s just… me having been stupid.”

“Oh?”

“I met… someone and we were talking for a while… a long time actually, we hung out. Anyway I slept with him and it was great... But then we apparently can’t see each other any longer, not even as friends. He uh…I have a sneaking suspicion he’s a part of some clique that collects—“

“Alpha Pack.”

Stiles winced and looked at Peter.

“I didn’t think that Derek could… I mean he seemed… Well, isn’t that the point? To make it seem like there could be something, it’s a game… I just didn’t realize how hard it was played, you know?”

Peter tilted his head, “Why do you say that?”

“I mean… he didn’t seem like that open of a guy, you know? He told me about his family, how they died and other things that I’m pretty sure weren’t made up and they weren’t the standard protocol for trying to score. I mean, we’ve been talking, hanging out for _months._ Seems like a long way to go just to score, you know? I can’t be that great of a trophy.”

Peter manages a straight face as Stiles shakes his head, “It doesn’t matter. He’s passive aggressively made himself “busy” and I’m not sure if I can stomach trying.”

“Yet there’s something bothering you?”

“It’s like being dumped without reason… or even being dumped without even really being in a relationship.”

Peter nodded and Stiles shook his head, “I’ll be fine. He’s probably off laughing it up, no need for me to mope, you know? Can’t give him the satisfaction of chasing after him either.”

Peter nodded slowly, as Stiles got up to check on the reduction leaving Peter alone to contemplate. Stiles was the one that had sparked that momentary change in Derek?  Stiles was the one Derek’s been texting for months. He’d thought for sure that Derek was going to shake himself out of the self-destructive pattern he’d worked himself into. Yet now his own rules were driving him back the other way. How interesting. The rest of the session continued on until there was pasta made and the dish was made presentable with a few leaves of fresh basil on top of the mariana soaked meatballs. Peter swirled his fork through the sauce and took a bite, nodding.

“Good. Get out of here, Joachim. It’s probably far later than your usual bed time.”

Stiles snorted, it wasn’t even midnight yet and how much longer would Peter demand to call him by his real name when no one else did?

 “Not even close, dude. Thanks, Professor.”

“Until next week, we’re doing soufflés.”

Stiles groaned but nodded and left before heading down the elevator and to his jeep. HE stays up the rest of the night working on the rest of his sampling at the dining room table. He doesn’t chance the coffee house on the off chance that Derek could be there.

In the morning, he goes to class with Danny and hands over half the batch of muffins he’d made at dawn. Danny frowns at the box and looks at Stiles.

“You didn’t sleep at all did you?”

Stiles shakes his head and Danny nods, “He doesn’t know what he’s missing.”

Stiles smiles at that, “Thanks Danny. Go on, get to class. I have cooking to do.”

He heads towards the culinary building as Danny heads towards his programming class. He manages a seat towards the back when Ethan, the tall blonde who he’d been paired with for projects, comes barreling in and plops down beside him moments before the professor began to talk.

“I’ll buy you lunch, if I can have half of your muffin.”

Danny hums, hiding a laugh. Ethan was always bargaining for food with him. It helped being the best friend of Stiles on many occasions. Rides to wherever he needed, the blonde’s phone number, opportunities for conversation… At least, that had been when Danny had been considering getting to know him for romantic purposes… Ethan being one of the twins of the alpha pack had shut that door and now it was just good for favors. Conversation still happened because Ethan was a likeable guy, but it was strictly platonic on Danny’s side of the world.

“I don’t know… my best friend made these… they’re worth more than lunch. Didn’t I tell you he’s a baking genius?”

“Lunch for a whole week,” Ethan pleads.  “I’m starving.”

Danny takes a bite and moans earning Ethan’s stare, his pupils blown, “It’s like… sex dripping into mouth.”

“I will submit the full project write up, and buy you lunch for a month.”

Danny laughs, licking his lips and tilting the molten center muffin to keep the salted caramel inside. Ethan doesn’t have to wait for an answer as Danny offers him a whole muffin.

“He gave me half a dozen, I won’t eat them all.”

“Thank you,” Ethan breathes taking the muffin with reverent hands and biting through the top.

It’s like warm caramel topped apple pie and Ethan finds himself moaning obscenely. Danny blinked, apparently frozen by the sound.

“By god, this is amazing.”

“You should try his chocolate cake.”

Ethan shudders at the thought. Being friend with Danny was going to be dangerous it seemed. They manage to get through the class in odd companionship and Ethan makes good on his promise to buy Danny lunch. They chat and eat and every time goes the route of something a little more intimate, Danny redirects the conversation. When it’s over, Ethan is oddly confused and frustrated.

“What’s wrong?” Erica asks, seeing his face.

“I think… I think I’ve been friend-zoned solidly.”

Erica’s eyebrows lift in an oddly Derek way, “By who?”

“The guy in my class,” Ethan said. “The hot one.”

Erica nodded, “Maybe he’s in a relationship.”

Ethan shook his head, “No.”

“Not interested then?”

Ethan wrinkled his nose thinking back to the first few weeks. There had been something there, an interest really there. Ethan hadn’t been thinking of it. He usually tried to stay away from people he’d be seeing frequently, but he talked to Danny, he’d been pulled in and now Danny had drawn some line, a neat box around him.

“I don’t know about that either.”

Erica shrugged, “Give me a ride downtown? I’ve got Reyes business.”

“Sure thing,” he said, putting his helmet on her head and leading her towards his bike. He dropped Erica off at the courthouse downtown and waited.

She was probably going in to talk to her social worker, that was usually what it was and now that he thought about it, he and Aiden had a check in coming up pretty soon. Derek probably had it marked on his calendar like a protective older brother or something. Erica came back out an hour later and blinked in surprise.

“You waited.”  


“Derek’s made me a gentlemen.”

Erica snorted and climbed on, sliding on the helmet and holding on as Ethan guided the bike back to campus for their last few classes. He’s expecting it to be a normal day until his phone rings as he’s leaving class. It’s Erica’s number.

“Sup, Er—“

“Ethan! Hel—”

The phone cut out and he called Derek to tell him. Apparently, Erica should have been heading from her literature class towards the art building to meet with Derek to ride home. That was a long way. He texted Aiden and Isaac to keep an eye out as he headed that way. He heard a shriek and a bunch of voices and the roar of the Camaro.

“No one’s going to believe you whore!”

He got off his bike and rushed that way, but Derek had streaked past him by then, slamming into the first body his saw and toppling him over before catching himself and moving. Erica had sprung into action moments later, now with leverage enough to land a solid kick to someone’s groin. Isaac came up from behind, toppling someone else as Aiden and Ethan joined the fray. A few ran off and Erica stood against the building breathing deep after punching a guy’s lights out.

“Erica are you alright?” Derek asked coming towards her.

She nodded stiffly, tossing her hair back and rubbing her throat, “To think it’s the ones I _wouldn’t_ sleep with that cause the problems.”

Derek doesn’t chuckle, but pulls her into his arms as Isaac calls campus police to collect the unconscious and give their statements. Derek puts his jacket on her shoulders and rocks her.

“It’s alright,” Derek murmurs into her hair. “You’re safe now.”

Erica nods, but he knows that she doesn’t realize that she’s crying, the memories from so long ago are creeping up and pouring out without her knowledge. Derek hushes her, rocking her as she closes her eyes and sinks into the comfort of his presence… Just like then. It’s amazing that in a year she’d come this far and being held still had this affect. He’d changed aftershaves at least three times, but it hadn’t changed the effect of Derek on her state of mind: calm and soothing, giving her strength when she’s just about out. Ethan picks up her phone from the ground and they stay near her until the police show up. Erica grips Derek’s hands as she gives her statement. The officer is the type that looked at Erica’s clothing and supposed she was asking for it. It takes everything in him not to punch the officer for saying “maybe try and dress a little more lady like and they’ll treat you like one”. Isaac takes the officer’s badge number and files a complaint against him complete with audio recording. He is after all studying to be a lawyer…

“They assaulted her,” Derek growls. “Clothing doesn’t warrant assault. It doesn’t warrant _anything_.”

The man looks at Derek dismissively and gets up. The EMT gets there and the students are cuffed and hauled off, but Derek knows they’ll probably get off lightly.

“Fucking prick,” Isaac said.

Erica’s hand is wrapped and she smiles lightly, “He just wanted a piece of this. See the way he was eyeing me.”

Derek shook his head, “I did, wanted to punch him for that too. Come on, let’s get you home. You’re staying with me tonight.”

“Ooh, sleep over with the Alpha!”

Derek chuckles and gets her into the Camaro. They all end up at his apartment that night in their pajamas, on Derek’s couch, cuddled together and playing board games. They’d sworn off Monopoly and Scrabble for the sake of their friendship but Sorry and Candyland were still fair game. When tensions are a little too high for a children’s board game, they watch a movie around a communal bowl of popcorn and pass out on the couch.


	4. Blood On My Sleeve, I Give More Than You Need

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles devises and enacts his plan to get answers from Derek. Lydia contemplates her relationship with Aiden and Peter tells Derek to get his shit together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still no beta. Thanks for the love! 
> 
> Also, I'll try and keep the posts steady, but there's no telling with me. Sometimes I'll blast through three to four chapters at a time and only post two, sometimes they'll all get posted. On the bright side, there will only be 13 chapters.

A few days have passed since Stiles saw Erica and Derek together, when his brain decides that he can’t take anymore. He hasn’t tried to text Derek or contact the man and it’s been practically radio silence between them. He hasn’t gone to the coffee shop either. All the memories are swirling and gnawing at him, emotions and questions bubbling up and pounding on the walls of his sanity. He’s nearly flipped over a table and broke out into a fit of tears before noon because he just can’t keep a hold of his emotions though. He’s out of Adderall because the pharmacy was out and wouldn’t be restocked until the next day. He’s out of his anxiety meds too because his doctor isn’t around to write him a new prescription. He doesn’t have any more anti-depressants because the only ones the pharmacy has would drive him up a wall within a few hours of taking the first dose, so he has to wait a whole week before he can even hope to stabilize his moods. He hasn’t had a good night’s sleep and, despite his classes going well, he’s losing his mind.

He blows a bang out of his eye and remembers that he hasn’t thought to cut his hair in weeks and he probably looked ridiculous. It’s the last straw before he’s running from his last class, Culinary Palette II, straight to the practice room his “Elements of Rock” band, affectionately named “ADD is Genius”, is taking over. They’ve been working on the arrangement, it’s just his job to play guitar and sing the words…They’re supposed to be recording the performance and the track for review. When the song was chosen, the professor said that they should have fun with it and depending on how well they did with it, the rest of their semester would be set. They hadn’t been allowed to listen to the way the words were sang, only the accompaniment.

It hadn’t been so close to heart, but today, the words are filling him and he need to sing them, to get them out and clear his head. His emotional and logical brains have latched on to it and are pushing the words against his lips. He’s surprised he doesn’t burst into song walking down the hallway as it’s usually the way he clears his head, pouring all the chaos into lyrics and ending the song with a clear mind. He walks into the room, puts in his earbuds and picks up the electric guitar. They wait for the go ahead from the guy in the booth before taking a breath and counting down. It makes him feel better, more at ease and focused with the count down and the gentle sound of strings being plucked as he begins to sing.

 “ _You’ve got me shaking from the way you’re talking. My heart is breaking but there’s no use crying…_ ”

He had been shaking from the first moment. Nervous at Derek’s charm and the ease that came with talking, joking, _laughing_ with the man. He’d been hesitant at first, but pretty soon Derek had backed off the seduction and talked to him… He’d learned the hard way that it was all a game. And really, what was the use of crying it wouldn’t help him clear his head, it wouldn’t help him figure out the world he’d stumbled into. When he starts playing, his eyes are closed and he’s singing a little too open for a simple weekly assignment, he knows that the stupid bang is in his eyes again perfectly emo—the bastard.

“ _What a cyanide surprise you have left for my eyes. If I had common sense I’d cut myself or curl up and die!…Sticks and stone could break my bones, but anything you say will only fuel my lungs…_ ”

There’s a sound outside of the room and the door opens, but he can’t see it. His eyes are closed and he’s ignoring the twist in his gut of being watched by the unblinking eye of a camera. He only hopes that his professor doesn’t direct him to the counseling center after watching and listening. There’s a group of sorority girls walking in as they’re playing.  They play on and Stiles isn’t listening to their whispers, hitting the notes like a punching bag, strumming the strings hard enough that they should have broken from his abuse. He feels raw and open and the words are too close to home, but his mind is clearing, the emotional pressure the anxiety and pain are focused, funneling out. He’s thinking of the months, of Derek’s face. Of why? What for? It was way too extreme to just be for sex. There was too much something, he knew that.

“ _Don’t mind us we’re just spilling our guts. If this is love, I don’t want to be loved. You pollute the room with a filthy tongue, watch me choke it down so I can throw it up._ ”

The brunette in the front is eyeing him throughout the entire song, with interest, but he’s not paying attention, sinking deeper into the song. He knows someone is recording him on a separate feed than the band and it probably sounds too vulnerable, but powerful. Always so vulnerable, bearing his heart and soul on stage in the bedroom, getting himself smashed to pieces and having to pick himself. He screams through the first bridge maybe a little more hardcore than he intended. He sees the guy in the sound booth giving a thumbs up to them. Powerful--he has power doesn’t he? It’s that same power that’s making his throat feel raw, his fingers burn, and the brunette look at him like that, cheeks flushed.

“ _Failure find me! To tie me up now, cause I’m bad, as bad as it gets! Failure, find me-- to hang me up now by my neck cause I’m a fate worse than death!_ ”

Power, yes. Power he had. He didn’t have Derek’s looks, or a normal name, but his mind was a steel trap. Adderall dulled or not, he was sly, devious, practical and Machiavellian when he wanted to be. He could be as bad as it gets, a fate worse than death, Derek’s nightmare come to life. To make him listen and make him answer is all he wanted… But Derek wouldn’t answer someone he didn’t see, someone not in his game. Someone not on the board—

She bites her lip and Stiles begins to understand that she’s flirting with him… He feels nothing about it, but knows he won’t have to. He doesn’t have to be sexually attracted--that was it…It would be perfect. Brilliant even, inspired-- a Divine Move. Perspective and answers all there is he could just figure out the game. That had been the problem. He was a virgin to it all, the whole game. He’d never had a glance at the full board…Hell, he didn’t even really realize that there was a board. If he was going to win, he needed to see the whole board as Derek saw it to even get a chance at understanding the game. To get into the game he needed to put himself on the board, on Derek’s radar. To play the game, he had to learn the rules, the boundaries and the secret language of sex.

“ _Don’t mind us we’re just spilling our guts. If this is love, I don’t want to be hanging by the neck before an audience of death._ ”

He smirks meeting her eyes, getting through the end of the song, the fueled by the words in his memories and those last few between them.  The last two choruses come from all of them and the change the ending to crazy guitar solos until they all cut out and abrupt end to a song that had had too much poured into it. Who knew that three minutes would be enough to devise a full plan to plan and to attack? This was why he was majoring in music, it just made all the chaos in his head make sense.

 “On your fucking A-game, huh Stilinski?” The bassist punches him in the arm. “Or is it the audience?”

He pulls the ear buds out and he feels himself drawing back from the world. It isn’t about him, it’s not him personally, he’s just a body. Just piece on the board and that’s all he has to do, all he has to be. No attachment doesn’t mean no heart, it means no attachment and the clarity he needed to get it done. The words come so easy, like slipping into the shadows and staying still, he smiles over to the group of women and meets the brunette’s gaze.

“Definitely the audience.”

The brunette smiles slyly at him and they mingle for a second before she’s sliding up to him, pressing her form against him.

“We’re having a party tonight, you should come… Look for me…”

He let his mouth tick up and tucks a curl behind her ear, she flushes a bit and bites her lip, “Sure thing.”

She grinned, leaning up to whisper, “I’ll save you dance.”

Stiles nodded, “I’ll be sure to collect.”

They leave soon after. Her number on a sticky note is pressed into his hand. He slides it into his pocket and they get through the rest of practice.

“That was Devi… head of the sorority house, you know that right?”

Stiles shrugs, apparently she had a thing for musicians. Stiles decides to continue reading Casanova’s memoirs and as he gets through his notes of the previous ones and continues on, he feels the persona shaping in his mind. He couldn’t conquer this feeling, he could submit to it and let it lead him. He could steer and hold on for dear life, but never let it rule his actions, lest it conquer him. Better to submit willingly and maintain his control than lose all semblance of control. He talks to Lydia first, meeting her in the sound booth. When he tells her what he’s thinking, she swallows.

 “Playing hard ball, but you’re not built for it, are you Stiles?”

“Maybe it’s because I’m not built for it that I’m actually good at it,” he said. “No real way to get tripped up. It will all just be sex.”

Lydia nods, it’s a fair point and she knows that he’s asking her first because he’d need her as an ally when Scott hears about it.  He drives them both to his apartment and called the emergency meeting. They had been planning on dragging him out tonight anyway, it was perfect. And when they were all there, comfortable in the living room he started talking from the beginning and told them exactly the plan. Become a part of the Alpha Pack, get close to Derek, get some fucking answers.

Lydia looks at him and they share a moment. She can’t tell him it’s a bad idea, it’s practically brilliant—Art of War inspired really.  She didn’t have the sort of strength it required, but Stiles… Stiles who’d seen hell… He could pull it off. Even as she wanted more than anything to have the answers that Stiles was chasing.

“This is a bad idea.”

“Why would you say that?” Stiles asks, holding a crumpled mass of papers, print outs, notes, Scott isn’t sure if they’re for class or this crazy idea he’s got, but Stiles holding crumpled papers is a bad sign.

For one, Stiles has been color coding his folders since they were kids, everything had a place and the folders were all together in a binder, the pages were always protected from the dangers of impromptu spills and Stiles’s flailing, yet… those pages weren’t in a folder. He wasn’t even sure where Stiles had pulled them from. Stiles was losing grip on his routine and that wasn’t good. What the hell had this Derek guy done to his best friend?

“Because you’re not made for this.”

“Maybe that’s why it’ll work.”

Scott snorted and even Danny looked a little wary, but watching him be more frantic than they’ve seen him in a while was something. The nervousness, the jitters, the disorganized chaos of Stiles that was usually organized chaos, was unnerving and frightening. Danny could see it. Lydia could see it, so of course Scott and Kira could see it. Scott feared that it would in the end do more harm than good.

“Think of it like the mean girls Scott”, he said. “Infiltrate the world and then you destroy it from the inside.”

“Except Lindsey Lohan ended up forgetting who her friends were and turned totally plastic.”

“Yeah, for a portion of the movie, yes. But that’s because she was doing it for the wrong reasons. She didn’t have any real personal stake in destroying the social structure or any opinion in the planning.  I do!”

“It’s a mostly brilliant plan,” Lydia said. “Except you’re a graceless klutz for the most part.”

He pulled out the sticky note, “I have Devia Victor’s number in my hand.”

Scott’s jaw dropped and Danny’s eyes widened. Lydia smiled.

“All I did was sing,” Stiles said. “Talked a little bit. Things will turn out fine.”

 “Not if it doesn’t work,” Scott tries.

“Is this whole like remain optimistic in the face of complete and utter disaster thing a part of the be a better Scott McCall program?”

Scott closes his mouth for a second and Stiles prays that no one calls him on the wet sound of his voice around the words.  They’re fast, his usual pace, the lingo is there, but he knows they can hear the almost breaking in his voice. It’s dangerous. Stiles has the sort of strength that could make it work, but even with that strength Stiles has scars that run too deep for him to come out unscathed. Scott only hoped that it wouldn’t all go to hell.

“Just answers?” Scott ventures.

“I… I need closure, Scott and I’m not going to get it anyway else.”

Danny nodded, “That much I can vouch for.”

Stiles gestured to him. The resident playboy expert agreed with him. Stiles and Scott met eyes and he waited, he needed Scott’s support at least on the emotional level. He needed him, but he also needed to do this if only to get his answers.

“Alright, buddy,” Scott said. “I’ll help you.”

“I’m in,” Kira said. “At the very least to knock this asshole down a peg or two. We’ll turn you into a force of nature.”

“But not dressed like that,” Lydia said with a smile.

He smiles at them and nods. Scott grins, “I’m just here for support.”

He nods and grins. It’s a three hour wait till the party starts and thus four before he leaves because it’s a noob’s job to show up first. Stiles has to get there after the initial crowd as a diving gift to the hostess. She dresses him and preps him. A simple t-shirt that showed off his build, nice jeans and clean sneakers.

“Stick with being funny,” Lydia said. “Let her come onto you, but makes sure to let her know you’re interested.”

Stiles knows what that means. He thinks back to Derek, the words that lead up to it, the way of holding himself and smiles.

“Can I have a rule?” Stiles asks.

“Of course,” she says. “You’re allowed to have scruples. Lines are sexy for the most part, means you’ve got scruples.”

“Non-gender specific, no virgins, and I won’t lead anyone on. No lying.”

Lydia smiled and kissed his cheek, “Those are good rules.”

He nods and breathes. They go to the party and before he goes to search for Devi, he grabs a cup. Lydia gets brought into a circle of people and he lets his eyes scope the crowd. He doesn’t have a very good vantage point.  He asks one girl in the standard sorority colors where Devi might be. She shrugs, but tells him she’ll let him know that he was looking for her. It’s the shift of her eyes and the tightness in her eyes that means she’s lying to him.

He drinks deeply of the virgin punch that’s served, not interested in being plastered and heads towards the dance floor. He catches sight of Aiden, Ethan and Erica and it isn’t long before he sees Derek. He steers himself towards the dance floor sure not to cause a commotion that will draw her attention. The girl he spoke to slides up as Stiles gets towards the edge of the dance floor. The music is loud and he waits, not in search, but to bait. Long enough to be pointed out, he waves at Scott to let him know he’s disappearing, enough to be recognized, enough for her to know that he’s not waving at her, enough for her to know he’s there. He doesn’t know if Derek looks at him or even recognizes him, but he doesn’t look at the man. He doesn’t need to because the point is to be seen as a piece on the board. It’s a stroke to his ego that she excuses herself to talk with her sorority sister for a moment and leaves the girl with Derek to chase him through the crowd.

He smirks, wandering a little deeper until she loses him and circles around.

He taps her shoulder and she whirls to look at him in his comfortable t-shirt, jeans. She’s in her sorority colors and crown marking her as queen of the hive and of course the head of the sorority. Her eyes are lined with glittery liner; she’s pretty with pouty, full lips. He personally doesn’t feel anything about it. She wants to fuck him, that’s all. He can do that. It won’t be as good as it had been with Derek because he didn’t like her, but he felt the beginnings of his body. Demi-sexual as his mind was, his body just liked people in general, close connection or not.

“Hey,” she greets with a grin, “I was beginning to wonder if you’d vanished.”

Stiles smiles, “Not before I collect on that dance.”

He’s only glad that Danny loves him and taught him how to grind properly, because if he’d let Scott teach him it would have been all bad. But since Danny loved him, he could now grind like a pro, so much that she was breathless and griping him, dragging him through the crowd towards a door and downstairs.  Her lips on his, he didn’t touch letting her lead the way, her hands undoing his pants and Stiles steels himself for the plunge just before his zipper is down. He steps forward, spinning them around and laying her back on the table, kissing her until she gasped and squirmed. He feels like a man possessed by something else. He thinks it’s the needy look in her eyes, the way she bites her lip.

“Oh god,” she breathes as his tongue trails up her neck.

“Stiles will do,” he said, earning a laugh.

She didn’t laugh after that, but she did scream and Stiles thinks that channeling his own experience with Derek was the only reason he got through that without embarrassing himself. He’s turned on and eager to make her feel good, maybe his virgin curiosities and want to be good enough, makes it better, because she shakes beneath him. Maybe because he knows that his want to make it good is all he’s got to make this work.

_Thank god for porn, psychology, and anatomy textbooks._

*

Scott is still hanging around when Stiles and Devi reappear. She’s in his arms and he carries her up the stairs. She’s practically glowing, he’s got the afterglow as well, but there’s something tense about him.  When he comes back down a few minutes later, letting a sorority girl know that where he’s placed her, Scott isn’t sure what to think. But there’s the gossiping and Stiles struts right past known members of the alpha pack, running a hand through his hair before leaving out the door and catching up with Scott.

The drive home is quiet with everyone back in the car except for Lydia who’s catching a ride with someone from a class and to work the crowd and figure out what the reception was. Stiles relaxes into the driver’s seat and drives.

“So?” Scott asked. “You alright?”

He nodded, “Yep.”

“You sure?”

Stiles nods slowly. He feels empowered strangely. That he’d reduced a woman who was obviously more experienced than him to a shaking mess. It’s not quite heady but it makes him think of the way Derek had screamed for him and growled at him to fuck him faster, to ride him faster.

“Yeah… oddly.”

There was none of the sickening feeling, no guilt that he expected. He seemed to walk away from that experience with all of his morals intact. Lydia arrives the next day with a smug smile and a hug.

“What did you do Stiles?” She asked. “The way they were talking made it seem like I should give you a go myself.”

Stiles wrinkled his nose and laughed, “Probably not the best idea. I’d like to not get my face caved in to that hunk of a man that you’re snuggling up with frequently.”

Lydia freezes, blinks and Stiles knows that he’s hit a button he didn’t know was there. He pulls her in to the apartment and makes her sit at the bar. It takes three minutes to whip up her favorite tea with just enough cream and real vanilla syrup before he says it.

“Talk.”

She blows out a breath, “Aiden…”

His eyes widen. Aiden ?

“As in Ethan, Aiden?”

She nodded.

“How long?”

She shrugged, “Since last year.”

“Jesus, Lydia are you okay?” Her jaw trembles and she closes her eyes as he rounds the bar to sit beside her and hug her. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I didn’t… It just sort of happened and now… I just want clarity. I just want to know where we stand, you know?”

He nodded as she continued talking about how gentle he is with her. The oddly intensely intimate moments they have when they’re alone. To Stiles it sounds like they’re dating, but Aiden hasn’t said anything and Lydia can only give so many hints. She isn’t going to ask outright, he knows that and he knows why.

“I feel like he should have a key by now, but I’m not sure if he’d take it.”

“You can only ask.”

Lydia huffs, “And if it’s just a game.”

“Then send him my way and I’ll get someone to kick him in the nuts.” Lydia laughed, “Wouldn’t want you to scuff your shoes, you know?”

She bumped shoulders with him, “Thanks.”

*

Derek enters his uncle loft to find him in the kitchen unpacking bags of groceries that look oddly mixed. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason, but since he was there in the morning and not some other time, Derek assumed that he had something important to talk about. Peter’s loft was a thing of wonder really if only because he owned the whole floor and had the kitchen expanded to fit his exacting standards. New age décor and art decorated the rest of the place, it reminds him of the elegance of the Hale House unlike his own apartment. Perhaps he should throw a bit more color into the apartment besides the huge deep blue couch that occupied most of his living room.

“You wanted to talk with me?”

“A new menu, Derek,” he said. “You’re going to sit there and taste things as the new owner.”

Derek snorted, “Bring it on.”

“I have a session with Joachim tomorrow so I’ll probably have more for you to try tomorrow.”

“Who’s Joachim?” Derek asked, it was the first time that Peter had mentioned anyone. Peter was the sort of chef that should have his own show to demolish budding chefs. He tolerated most people, so to hear him speak of anyone that he was having any sort of learning experience with was new and demanded his attention because it was very likely that he was going to be meeting this _Joachim_ in the near future.

“The protégé I’m training. I plan on bringing him to the restaurant and giving him a job next summer and hopefully every summer until he graduates. It’s a shame I didn’t find that gem last year, but no time like the present.”

Derek snorted, it was rare for Peter to like anyone in the kitchen, but as Peter began to sing his praise, he had a feeling that it would be in his best interest to plan some sort of internship or work-study program at the restaurant that Peter managed.

“He’s a joy,” Peter explained. “Efficient, mind like steal trap that one. Far too busy though.”

Derek nodded, he understood that feeling as he opened the financials for Hale Incorporated. In the aftermath of the fire three years ago, Peter and Derek had been scrambling to keep everything steady. They’d done a good job. The company hadn’t slacked off in quality or care, but they were both living very different lives than what should have been. For one, Peter had had to be not just the chef, but a manager as well of several restaurants. Derek had been handling the books and client relations meaning he’d had to shave a lot more than he usually liked to and he was wearing his jeans and leather jacket combination a lot less. He stepped in as manager when Peter was needed most in the kitchen, but somehow they’d made it work. They’d been lucky that the majority of their staff were good people that had been loyal to the company that treated them well for years. It had made the transition easier. Since he took on full ownership of the company almost a year ago, he’d had less time to distract himself with strangers. The twink had been a welcome reprieve and exception and now that he was avoiding the twink, he had no one besides the pack to talk to about the day to day of running a large regional company while in school.

“You alright?” Peter asked swiveling a sauce pan in his hand. “You’ve been looking a little worse for wear for weeks.”

“Well, Erica getting attacked didn’t help.”

“I’m sure, she doing better?”

Derek nodded, “Much better. She bought a new pair of combat boots.”

Peter nodded, “I always did admire that woman’s tenacity and zest for life.”

Derek snorted and frowned watching Peter inspect a grapefruit with a fork in his hand. He was used to Peter’s eccentric personality, but sometimes he couldn’t stop himself from asking.

“What are you doing?”

“I watched Joachim do something to a citrus with a fork and I’ve been intrigued ever since. I can’t figure out what he did but it made the best lemon meringue I’ve ever had.”

Derek’s eyes brows rose and he shook his head, his uncle was weird on the best days.

“And you still haven’t answered my question… you were actually looking happy for a few months. What happened?”

“I slept with him.”

Peter sets down the grapefruit and the fork and regards his nephew. Apparently, it was time to be an uncle and not a business partner. He stares Derek in the face as he leans forward, Derek cards a hand through his hair.

“I’m not sure why I’m so torn up about it.”

Peter has the nerve to look amused, “Could it be that you regret it?”

“No,” Derek said. “This isn’t regret, Peter.”

“Have you talked to him?”

“Not really.”

Peter rolled his eyes, “What happened?”

“We…had dinner.”

Peter leaned on his elbows and gave Derek that look that made him feel like he was being patronized. But it always worked to make laconic Derek step aside and rambly Derek step to the forefront. Derek chalked it up to Peter having the sort of gaze that his mother had when she knew something was bothering him. He had no defenses against it. So he talked and he wasn’t sure if the look of surprise on Peter’s face was because he was talking or because of what he was saying. He’d told Peter his rules when he started. No dinner, no dates, nothing longer than a month, no contact afterwards, no names,… No emotional attachment, yet Derek had unwittingly, and unintentionally, broken all of his own rules with the twink and hadn’t noticed until the morning after. He’d never broken his rules before, always conscious of them and his relationship with them.

“What’s his name?”

“Stiles—“ Derek froze, the name not catching in his throat, no auto-correction, no sense of anything but the bitter after taste of it on his tongue. He shouldn’t have said it. He _never_ gives names… another rule broken and damn it, he’d been doing so well with that one. He shook his head, just another failure in the long list of his shortcomings.

“Huh,” Peter said and moved to poking at the grapefruit with the tips of the fork again. “You never give names.”

“I know.”

“You like him.”

“No.”

Peter leveled him with a look and turned on the faucet to turn on and fill the sauce pan.

“You can lie to me, but I know you’re lying. You talked to this _Stiles_ for how long? Months? Nearly a year, Derek, before you had sex with him. And you can’t lie to me and say you were still sleeping around at month six.”

Derek swallowed and winced, looking back at the financials and grabbing his computer from his bag. Anything not to have to look at Peter directly.

“What’s your point?”

“Ever think you might be healing and now that you’ve freaked out and cut yourself off from this _Stiles_ you’re spiraling into that hollowing out that I warned you about.”

Derek huffs and Peter points a knife threateningly at him, “Remember how it felt when Kate used you, I bet that’s exactly how he’s feeling right now. You’re becoming the monster that made you.”

Derek swallowed thickly and breathed, “Fix it, Derek. Before you create another monster and you can’t go back.”

Derek sighed, that was all well and good, but fixing it wasn’t exactly doable when he didn’t know how to. They didn’t talk about it anymore; instead, they talked about the restaurant and what Peter was thinking for the new menu. The sauce was for some sort of citrus seafood thing and while delicious Peter was convinced that there was something missing. Dessert was good, the softest cake he’d ever had, Peter had outdone himself really. The cream on top made him think of the twink and the chocolate mousse he’d topped his cake with, it had the same sort of consistency, the same smoothness in the taste.

“It’s a cookie recipe, topped with cream,” he explained and packed up what was left. “Take this to your ruffians and Erica and fix it, understand?”

Derek nodded, he understood. Didn’t mean he knew how, or that he could. Stiles was probably already… He pushed that thought away.  He didn’t want to think about it.


	5. Hanging By The Neck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aiden and Lydia end their tryst. Erica has her mind sexed. Derek and Stiles pine while still trapped in Derek's game. And lo and behold, Isaac realizes Allison is a badass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry guys! I'm still learning to work AO3. To make it up, there are several chapters being posted today. Yay!

After giving him the full report of how his little show was received, they go to the locksmith and then to the craft store to find a keychain. Her hands are shaking so much that she can’t get it on and Stiles has to do it for her. It’s stupid, because she’s not even sure when the next time she’ll see him is, but she’s nervous. She’s holding the keychain and key like a lifeline the entire time Stiles drives her back to her apartment. When they stop at her building, Aiden’s bike is there and she can see him sitting on the stairs by her apartment. She grips the key attached to the “A” key chain. She takes a deep breath,  accepts the hug from Stiles for courage and gets out. Blowing him a kiss and walking towards the steps, she gulps down breaths.

Aiden is sitting on the stairs near her apartment door holding his helmet. He’d seen the blue jeep pull up. Seen Lydia hug Stiles, climb out--seen her blow him a kiss before heading towards the stairs. He doesn’t know if she’s seen him though. His gut twists and he’s angry. He wants to ask what they are, why they were together. He wants all the answers he has no rights to and he doesn’t want to want the right to get them either.

“I didn’t know you were coming over,” Lydia said. “Were you waiting long?”

“No,” he lies. He’d been there for about an hour, debating whether or not to call. He’d wanted her to be home, but she wasn’t. The point where he needed to know more than anything what she did, and he wanted the right to ask, was  the point of no return. More than that, he didn’t mind the fact that she would have the right to ask either...not that she’d shown much interest in asking beyond a few times. She’d accepted his vague answers easily, looking back it was before he’d learned to read her… before she’d lowered the disinterested shield that was her Jimmy Choo heels and perfectly polished nails.

“You were with Stiles.”

Lydia tilted her head and leaned against the wall, “Yeah. You want to come inside?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

She swallowed, “You have to go?”

“No,” he said. “This isn’t a good idea.”

He stands and Lydia closes her fist over the key until she can feel the ridges of it.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve been spending too much time with you,” Aiden said. “I thought maybe you were getting the wrong idea. But I can see that I was wrong, so this conversation is kind of moot.”

Her fist curls tighter around the key and the words are on her tongue, burning to be said, but she keeps her calm even as her gut twists painfully.

“What are you saying?”

“Stiles, you’re fucking him, aren’t you?”

Her jaw dropped, “Why the hell would I do that?”

“Well, you slept with me,” as if that would explain his logic. “I was just wondering if maybe you had a type.”

Lydia isn’t sure how she managed it, but she steps forward and slaps him so hard the imprint on his cheek is there. Her hand stings from the impact, her eyes burn, but she stares him down. She opens her palm to show him the key and takes deep slow breaths as his eyes stare at it. It’s answer enough for his speculations and she knows that she’s stopped that train of thought where it was.

She’d told him what keys meant to her, how she’d never given anyone that sort of free reign over her space. Not even her best friends. They could barge in without knocking, yes, but if she locked the door they were stuck outside. Keys meant her at the core, it meant seeing her and not letting her hide behind doors, or locks, or anything. It meant Lydia Martin, all the shine of her shoes, the tones of her voice, the highlights of her hair, the darkness of her inner spaces and crack. It meant everything. She’d only given Jackson that sort of open door before and he’d returned in kind, but had crushed her otherwise. She stops herself from shaking, from speaking as he stares at it in her palm.

 _Breathe, Lydia. Just breathe. He isn’t Jackson._ Even if it ends the same way, she had no control over him.

“We aren’t,” he said, as if it’s punched out of him.

Lydia lets her pride curl up and she’s ready to back pedal to say it’s for convenience so he won’t have to sit outside next time, for whatever, for emergencies, but she stomps on those words.

_Needy, aren’t you? I never thought you were such a needy slut._

She isn’t that Lydia anymore. Whoever that Lydia was, that desperate and lonely Lydia without a backbone that bent over backwards, had died with her relationship with Jackson. She’d meant it when she swore she wouldn’t be that weak again. She’d spent so much time learning to lover herself again. As much as she wanted Aiden, she wasn’t going to back away or slither out of that rule. She isn’t that Lydia anymore. She comes first above all things, no matter how much it hurt. No matter the depth of loneliness—better lonely than empty. She’s loved him, but she hasn’t stopped loving herself either. So, she makes her fingers curl inward over the key. Each bend in digit as war hard won. Aiden starts at the movement and his breath hitches as she pulls her hand back across the divide between them. She says nothing for a moment. The war isn’t quite won, but she’s still fighting it, beating at the insecure forces that surge. Aiden forces himself to remain still as he watches her eyes grow glossy.

Then she’s blinking and the cool disinterest comes across her face. He feels the shields go up and he’s pushed back beyond Lydia’s safety zone. He feels it with each movement of her arm, with each second her eyes close him off from her inner space. The final door slams shut as she decides that he’s officially not worth her gaze, and one hand, the one with the key in it comes up. She takes the key ring off and drops it on the ground. The sound ricochets through her and will haunt her forever, she knows, but she has to do this for herself.

“No, I guess not,” she says, her voice detached, like a shrug. “Tally me up and put me on your bookcase. Another notch in your bedpost, in your belt… Go ahead, I’m sure you have to catch up for fooling around with me. I’ll delete your number. You want your stuff now or are you going to come back later?”

Trapping the key underneath her fingers, she inspects her nails with a thoughtful look. The moments her eyes leave him, his stomach tightens. The sound of the key chain hitting the ground is a punched in the chest that caves in his chest cavity and makes all the air in the universe a whispered dream. The realization that he’s left things in her apartment hits him with a force that scares him. He’d been in her _apartment_ for longer than a night, much longer…Long enough to forget things, to leave things…What was there? He couldn’t even remember.

Aiden doesn’t move, but he doesn’t have to because Lydia, clinical, sweet, defensive, unattached and haughty Lydia is fiddling with her phone and strutting in her high heels towards her apartment door. The words are at the back of his throat, choking him, on the tip of his tongue burning. He wants to tell her the truth--that he hasn’t slept with anyone else since they’ve been together, that he never thought of her as a trophy, that he couldn’t, that she was too important, that he’s scared he’ll ruin it, that he’s attached and just wants to hold her. But he doesn’t. He runs.

“Later,” he says and puts on his helmet as she turns the key. His eyes are burning and there are hot tracks on his face, but she can’t see that with the helmet on.

“Shoot me an email,” she said and closes the door behind herself.

Aiden hears the bolts slide into place and the chain rattle before he kneels to pick up the key chain. It’s a fragile chrome and electric blue “A” in a fancy cursive. He knows she didn’t get it from just anywhere from the delicacy of the work, the way it’s emblazoned on a flat silver and moonstone colored disk. He can feel her discerning eye looking for the perfect one, her nervous tremors, the twisting of her stomach while waiting for the key to be made. That shiny silver key that she’d trapped in her hand like a lifeline. This painstakingly sought keychain she dropped to the ground. It was her shield, her defense. She’d drawn the line before anything else, protecting herself the way she’d taught herself to and he’d let her. He slinks down the stairs and mounts his bike staring at it like a lost wonder.

He’s not sure how long he sits there staring up to where he knows her bedroom window is. He could go back up there. He could apologize. He could say that they are, to beg her forgiveness, to tell the truth and stop running… but he doesn’t. He revs his engine and guides the bike out of the parking lot with the key chain tucked into his jacket pocket.

Lydia hears the roar of his engine, but she hasn’t moved from sitting against the door. The tears won’t stop, and she hears herself crying sobbing, shaking and pathetic. She finds the strength to delete the number because there’s no sense in hanging on to someone that’s running from you. She’d loved Jackson that much, all the shine off her shoes, all the polish off her nails, all the volume out of her hair. And here she was, she’d done it again it seemed. All the Lydia out of herself-- gone with a keychain and a man that had only ever wanted her for one thing, only wanted pretty eyes and her full lips, the smoothness of her thighs, but never the heart and brain. They never went for the quick kill, just the slow torture of growing new skin and hoping it lasts a little longer this time. At least this time, she’d been the one to walk away. She’d been the one to pull her heart from beneath his boot and cradle it bruised but not shattered, hurt but not ended. She’d grown new skin before, thicker. She could trust herself to do that much…she hoped.

It may take longer this time, but it would come.

A knock sounds on the door and she swallows, “Who is it?”

“It’s me, Lyds,” Stiles says through the door. “Open up, sweetheart.”

She gets up, opens the door and steps into his arms willingly. He strokes her hair and lets her cry, kissing her temple. He’s angry, so damn angry because what the fuck is Aiden’s damage? Derek’s damage? The whole of them that do this half-domestic routine and then back pedal when things take a turn for concrete?

“Don’t bottle it up, Lyds,” he says gently. “You’re still the bravest girl I know.”

He walks her back into the apartment and locks the door, walking towards her bedroom, she curls up against him, crying silently and he holds her, quiet, laying together on her bed.

“I’ll kick him in the nuts in the way it matters.”

Lydia laughs, “My hero.”

*

Derek arrives at his apartment to see Aiden in the living room, sitting and staring into nothing. Erica is there too, but it doesn’t seem like either of them are there to speak to each other. They look up at him and Derek can tell that something monumental has happened. Aiden swallows and tries for a smile, he’s always the hardest to crack when something’s wrong.

“Hey, you see Eth’?”

Derek shakes his head, “Not since last night. Said he was living in the library for tonight.”

Aiden nods and gets up, “I’ll uh go find him then.”

He escapes then and Derek knows that a conversation is looming in his future. He walks and sits beside Erica who assumes her normal position against him, his arms around his waist, face buried in his chest and breathing.

“What’s wrong, pup?” he asks and she chuckles.

“Are you a papa wolf or a brother wolf?”

“I’m sure they overlap for you,” Derek said.

“You’re not even that much older than me.”

“Doesn’t matter, stop stalling.”

“I… broke a rule.”

“On the scale from protection to double dipping—“

“Double dipping,” she says immediately, scrunching up her face. “Can you imagine me with a _kid_?”

“I can,” he said affectionately. “And the riot of curls they would have… So tell me about this guy.”

Erica huffs and while she usually regales her nights with almost sickening detail, she’s hesitant about this one. She tells him in the vaguest terms possible that the guy had done things that no one else had managed to, made her feel things that she hadn’t before. That they’ve been talking for months as they’re in class together and he hadn’t judged her at all for all the things she wanted, respected her boundaries and _challenged_ her.

“He’s funny a nice guy. You’d like him, but I… I didn’t intend to. It just sort of happened.”

“The first time?”

“Yeah…”

“And the second?”

She flushed, “Erm… there was a little more planning on his part for that one.”

Derek waited, “Not in the sinister way… but… the man has a mouth on him okay? I’m only mortal.”

Derek snorted, “So he fucked your brains out.”

“He’s sexed my brain, Derek,” Erica said with a straight face. “Outside of the bedroom and then again in the bedroom. What do I do?”

“Are you asking me if it’s okay to bring him home to meet papa wolf or if I’ll disown you for having a relationship?”

Erica goes quiet and Derek only smiles, kissing her forehead, “He hurts you, I’ll kick his ass. Whether you’re in a relationship or not, I’ll come to your rescue. Just call.”

Erica nods slowly, “Who’d have thought…”

Derek snorted, “I didn’t think any of you would last long sleeping through hoards of people.”

She tilted her head, “Why do you say that?”

“Sex was… just a starting place for all of you. There was no vendetta related to it, no pain, it was just a place of control to start from a steady ground that you could stand on while you figured everything out. You all crave companionship more than anything.”

“And what about you, alpha who protects them all?”

Derek snorted and nudged her, “No Dreamworks when we’re being serious please. And I have you all.”

She nods. Derek did have them, but the evasion was obvious even to someone who hadn’t spent as much time with him. His eyes are distant, thoughtful and soft. It’s the same sort of expression he has when he thinks about the holidays. She usually only saw it whenever they started talking about taking over Derek’s apartment for Thanksgiving and begging Peter to make cake.

“Would that look on your face happen to be about that guy that you banged? The triple major?”

Derek rolls his eyes, trust Erica to point out things he doesn’t want to talk about. No wonder she and Peter got along so damn well. He should really consider barring the pack from his uncle, but as the man had a key to his apartment, he knew that wasn’t going to happen.

“Maybe.”

She nodded, “You break a rule?”

“No.”

It isn’t a total lie. When he’d slept with Stiles, he’d followed all the rules. When he decided that Stiles was now the twink, he’d followed all the rules. For all the technicalities, it still felt like he was lying and it made him sick thinking that he hadn’t even been thinking of the game when he’d been with Stiles. Sure, he hadn’t broken the rules of the game technically, but he still feels like he crossed some unnamed boundary with Stiles.

“You want to though.” He didn’t comment and Erica made a humming noise, “Alright papa wolf, I won’t ask. I’m pretty sure uncle wolf has already grilled you.”

If only she knew. They chat a bit longer before Erica is up and praying for luck before going to meet the mysterious man that sexed her brain so well she’s contemplating a relationship. With he gone, the apartment is empty besides him. Isaac wouldn’t be back for a while yet, so he makes dinner for two, takes a shower and walks to the third bedroom that he’s transformed into a home office. It’s so damn quiet he can’t concentrate.

Not that Derek was one to fill the silence, but this silent felt like a graveyard and pins on his skin, pricking him as he read through company documents and contracts. It hurts his head and makes him read lines three times before he can make sense of it. If –

He grits his teeth against the thought, but it’s too late, because it’s too damn true. If Stiles were there the silence wouldn’t be so grating. It wouldn’t feel empty. If anyone was there, it wouldn’t be grating, but it wouldn’t feel as companionable as a silence with Stiles had. His mind pulls those nights of silence in the coffee shop, interrupted by nothing but breathing and the sound of his lips and teeth on a pen cap, into startling clarity behind his eyes and eyelids.

 _You have a serious oral fixation,_ he’d pointed out one such night earning a displeased sound and a kick.

Stiles, wearing his can headphones, stuck his tongue out at him and Derek chuckled. In his dark rimmed glasses that were more fashionable than reading glasses had the right to be and curled up in one of the coffee shop chairs, he’d been adorable and warm. He usually didn’t like to have anyone around when he was working unless he was working in a group, but Stiles had managed to make him aware but not distracted. He didn’t fidget as much as he usually did with the headphones on, sitting across from Derek. And just his presence made it oddly easier to concentrate even when the other did something to deliberately distract him from work. Derek chalked it up to Stiles’s personality: a healthy depth, grounding, and levity all mingled together. It was a welcome change from Derek’s personality which was made of mostly brooding.

A change that added to the grating silence of his small home office.

Derek grit his teeth and turned on music, yet somehow it didn’t help.

_And I swear that you don’t have to go…_

_I thought we could wait for the fireworks._

_And I thought we could wait for the snow to wash over Georgia and kill the herd…_

He groaned, changing the song and quickly realizing that Stiles had infected his playlist with a deadly disease. Where was the mindless music when he needed?

_Na na na come on…_

He would have thanked the gods for that, but again… Stiles had introduced him to the song. It made him think of Erica and the pack and _Stiles. And Stiles. And Stiles. And Stiles--_ that seemed to be every song on in his music library now, or least everyone that had volunteered for the random shuffle.

It took another hour of digging his heels in to realize that he was never going to get any work done that night. If he knew that he would dream of the taste of cream pale skin and moles, he wouldn’t have decided to sleep either. He may have even fought a little harder. But when his eyes closed and all he could remember was the taste of chocolate on that skin, the sound of Stiles’s gasps and moans, the feel of him falling a part, Derek woke up and in a moment of weakness, pulled his dick free of his boxers, already wet with precome, and chased the end of the dream with a desperation he didn’t know he was capable of. He came three time, just trying to take the edge off of being so turned on by the memory alone that when he resurfaced from the orgasmic haze, his eyes were burning and his chest was tight.

 

 In hindsight, it would appear to be a better alternative than pretending to work and then causing a catastrophe to befall the company, but at the moment the dream and his attempt to sleep just tasted of bitter regret and three-day old coffee.

He slunk to the bathroom to clean up, his head hanging in a sickened shame so deep he couldn’t even look himself in the eye.

 _Fuck_ , he thought. Stiles, virgin, skinny, snarky, pale as crème, dangerous as a kitten, _Stiles_ had fucking **_sexed_** his brain and Derek would never get another taste of that because he was just too fucked up.

 _O that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew!_ He heard Stiles quote with all the flair and angst of Hamlet.

He’d been practicing for his performing arts class. An exercise in angst and revulsion with the world… Stiles had been determined to wax poetic by reciting Hamlet’s speech with all the dramatic and theatrical flair he could muster. He hadn’t realized it why he’d felt so warm then, but now he knows that he’d been attracted to the man in a way that no one else had attracted him. He could appreciate the aesthetics of people, that’s usually what guided him in the game, but on the level of feeling pleasure it had all been a dull roar.

 _“How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, seem to me all the uses of this world,”_ Derek breathed to himself laughing bitterly. “ _Tis an unweeded garden, that grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature possess it merely. That it should come to this!_ ”

He hated Shakespeare. He’d hated it all through high school and the thought of reciting it was turning his sixteen year old self’s stomach. Somehow, it wasn’t as terrible as he remembered it with Stiles reciting the lines. He would have laughed, but it all seemed to have died out of him and he sunk down to sit, his head down, his hands clasped together and dared himself to cry when it was his own canon that had blown his legs off, blown his heart out, for a second time.

 _Fixed against self-slaughter,_ he thought. Not-self harm. You would think that the _everlasting_ would have added that to the book, but as life is merely learning suffering from pain, learning to avoid both and understand them, he couldn’t imagine it would make sense to add it to the list.

*

Perhaps Derek would have been happy to know that Stiles doesn’t fare much better that night in terms of getting things done. He works on his monologue for Character Exploration class by re-reading the class prompt and taking notes via recording. He’s rambling really, low enough that Scott can’t hear him, but loud enough for the words to be transcribed by his computer. That lasts until dinner and then he’s in the shower and curling up in bed. He isn’t sure when the tears start, only that they do and they don’t stop. He shakes. Cold and smothering sobs into the fluff of the Beacon Hills Sheriff’s Department blanket and his own comforter, he sleeps and dreams.

_The sound of gunfire and ash following in whispers. The world is burning around him, falling apart. There’s blood on his hands, on the gauzy white of the dress he’d been forced into, on his face, in his hair. Some of it is his own, some of it is that monster’s… some of it is—is—is--…_

_He’s screaming—_

_The blood. The blood is--_

_“Dad! Dad!”_

_The wall explodes over them and all Stiles can do is lean his body over his Dad to shield him from the debris. The building was empty, but his father had come for him. The bastard had tried to escape, dragging Stiles along, bound and gagged, but he’d slipped up and Stiles had struggled the whole way, screaming against the gag. It should have been deathless, but Stiles had been hurt, John had been hurt and the man that had taken the Sheriff’s son was unconscious on the floor not too far from them. The fire fighters were coming to help and Stiles screamed for them to help, to come, while trying to wriggle out of his binds. His leg is trapped and bleeding; his dad is wheezing, wet wheezes of pain and blood as Stiles can only try and press the front of himself against the wound for pressure. He can hear the man behind him moving, waking up, moving towards them, but he’s screaming._

_“Dad! Stay awake for me, Dad! Dad!”_

_The man wraps his arms around Stiles, sliding feverish hands lifting the hem of the dress to expose Stiles’s naked thighs and ass as if they’re all alone in that cell all over again. As if he’s chained to that bed again, dressed like a doll._

_“ **You cut your hair again, Claudia… very bad girl, you’ll have to be punished… You’ve dirtied your dress too…**_ **”**

I’m not Claudia, _Stiles thinks. He just looks like her, enough that the mad man that had taken his mother from him. He remembers, he remembers now that John had lied to him about it. That it had all been a lie to keep Stiles sleeping. To keep the memory and the panic at bay._

_“Dad,” he begs, shaking as the monster slides a warm hand over his ass and forces him forward._

_He’s shaking and he can’t breathe. The last burst of air slides out of wet lungs under his ear and he hears, more than feels the man fumbling for his pants. He would do it this time. This time for sure, Stiles wouldn’t be able to talk or shy his way out of it this time._

_“It’s all your fault,” his father’s lips say, cold with death and eyes staring into oblivion. “I knew you’d be the death of me… the same way you were the death of her.”_

Stiles wakes up screaming, thrashing and shaking so hard he’s managed to throw himself off the bed. He hears the sheets rip and knows that he’d gotten himself tangled up in them. His arms fly out and he rolls to his feet. His heart is beating too fast in his chest, too hard that it hurts to breathe. He’s alone in the apartment. Scott and Kira were gone for the weekend. He moves for the phone on his bedside table, trembling until the phone slips and slides.

 _Derek,_ he thinks. He needs to hear Derek’s voice so he can breathe.

_Derek—_

He drops the phone remembering it all and how he’d woken up alone that morning. Derek had soothed him to sleep, talking until his phone died, until he passed out and there was always a text in the morning.

_Sleep more._

_Goodnight Stiles._

_Call me in the morning._

He’d never asked what the nightmares were about, but he’d always soothed him. He’d even taken to calling Stiles when his own nightmares were keeping him up and they talked until they could fall back to sleep. But there had been no text the morning after Derek had fucked him stupid. Stiles feels it surging up, the grief and mourning—his father, his mother, Derek… and he hears himself screaming, gasping for breath, rocking, the world swims and he falls from bed, heaving for breath fighting for it until he can’t move. Screaming and screaming hoping that his body will not choke him out, but the walls are closing in and he can’t breathe. The world is swimming, his arms itch, he wants another pill, just one more—

_Hooked on you I need a fix I can’t take it. Just one more hit, I promise I can deal with it. I’ll handle it quit just one more time then that’s it. Just a little bit more, to get me through this._

The words circle his mind threading images of Derek’s smile, the sound of his voice in his ears, breathy, laughing, soothing, warm and incredible, his eyes, his touch and the last thing Stiles can manage to think is:

_Quote the raven nevermore._

Fucking ADD.

*

For once, Isaac wakes up before Derek. He assumes that’s because the other has no classes today and will be spending his day with the business. Unfortunately, Isaac does in fact have classes today.

_Son of a bitch!_

It’s his self-defense class. Completely unorthodox, Derek suggested it as Isaac and Erica were the only ones without any real training on how to defend themselves. He isn’t sure who he expected in the class, but seeing Allison there wasn’t it.

Allison Argent was in at least three of his law classes. A nice girl with dark hair and pretty face. She was witty and clever and Isaac had been attempting to get to know her since they’d ended up sitting side by side in Policy and Ethics.

“Not who I expected to see,” Isaac said with a nod.

Allison grinned, “My Dad’s making me take it. Apparently, gun range with him isn’t good enough.”

Isaac winced. Chris Argent was the leader of campus police. The fact that Allison was even in the class when she’d probably been taking private lessons from her father for years was amazing.

“My brother of sorts suggested I take it,” Isaac said with a shrug. “Something about needing to defend myself.”

Allison snorted, “Well, I’d wanna pick a fight with you all the time. You look like you could really boost my street cred… or at least the amount of money in my pocket.”

He laughed and hoped that she would always be that quick on her feet. It only took thirty minutes of being thrown around on the mats to pray that she lost her quickness _quickly._ He knew she’d been getting private lesson because there was no reason that she should be that good.

When it was over and Isaac managed to peel himself off the ground, she smiled and helped him to a bench.

“You didn’t do too badly.”  
“Why are you in this class again?”

“Dad has me take it once a year to freshen up, especially when there’s a new teacher.”

 _Oh great,_ he thought. _Not only could she shoot me, but she could incapacitate me as well._

“If you help me with economics, I’ll give you tips.”

Isaac groaned, she was going to be the death of him, but her magic balm for bruises and terrifyingly good deep tissue massage for kinks was more than enough to convince him to give up his economic secrets. When they part ways, he has her phone number now and she has all of his economic notes.

“Hey Isaac,” Erica greeted as she slung an arm around his shoulders. “Got a thing for Argent?”

Isaac tilted his head, he hadn’t really thought of that, but now that Erica mentioned it… Yeah. Yeah, he did. He didn’t really want to have sex with her right away. Somehow, sex was far less interesting than getting to know what went on behind those eyes that always seemed to be smiling and what she did when she wasn’t helping out at the gun range.

“You haven’t answered me.”

“I guess so.”

Erica let out a low whistle. That was good. With her and Isaac out of the game, they could pool resources to figure out Derek’s issue with the triple major he banged and then turned into a sexbot about. She needed another perspective on this and until Stiles was officially apart of the pack, as in he knew as much about them all as they did, there was no way she could tap into that delightfully observant brain of his.

“First operation is get Stiles in.”

Isaac nodded. At the very least, Stiles would change the dynamics. Hopefully, for the better.

“You think Derek will be okay with that? I don’t know if he and Stiles really get along.”

Erica snorted, get along? Erica had a theory that they were about ten seconds alone away from jumping each other, but that could just be the stack of yaoi manga she’d read earlier that week talking. There was really no telling. 


	6. I Keep Walking On Broken Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aiden suggests bringing Stiles into the pack. Derek is making himself sick. He and Stiles take a human sexuality course together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgive typos. Still hasn't been beta'd. Warning: Psychosomatic vomiting

Stiles wanders down the hall towards the oddest office he’s ever been in. It belongs to Professor Alan Deaton who teaches a myriad of things including Stiles’s organic chemistry class. It’s office hours and he’s stopping in for questions about the latest assignment on the effects of heat on certain compounds in food for the research paper he’s writing for Deaton’s class.

His doctor added a sleep pill when he’d gone for his check in, but he hasn’t taken it preferring to spend his wakeless nights due to his brain going in one too many directions at one time to getting his projects finished, stress baking and looking for internships for the next summer. He thinks it’s a more appropriate use of his time until his meds level out again. It’s been three days since his nightmare and now his meds have seemed to level out the way they’re supposed to.

When he arrives, there are more bodies that he’d ever remember seeing in Alan’s office and it’s the first time he’s heard Derek’s voice. He’s explaining something, leaning over the overturned tub turned desk and Stiles swallows. His eyes flicker around. Scott’s there and Isaac is there. Alan doesn’t look at him and he’s back staring at the back of Derek’s head.

The words are there he wants to announce himself, but then there’s the voice from behind him.

“ _Hello Stiles,_ ” the voice is warm and female. He turns, instantly receding into his persona. He doesn’t think Scott’s ever seen him like this, but it isn’t important.

Scott watches his best friend Stiles turn into someone else. It isn’t necessarily a bad change, but an odd sort of uncanny transformation that makes his stomach clench uncomfortably. It’s mostly because he knows Stiles is acting. Sure, all life was a stage, but this was different. The act and persona were so contrary to Stiles’s core personality and desires that he’s expecting to see bits of Stiles slip out—but there isn’t one. He doesn’t fumble, stumble, or ramble. He’s smoothe, collected…

“Jamie,” he greets as she slides up to him. “Doing alright?”

“I’m having a party in a few weeks and I need a band,” she started. “Devi told me you sound amazing. Could you help me out?”

Stiles tilts his head, “I can ask the guys. I’m sure if you give me the details, we can work something out.”

She smiles, “That’s just what I wanted to hear…Here’s my number and the flyer, call me if you need anything.”

He smirked, “Sure thing, Jamie.”

Scott’s eyes are wide and he isn’t sure if he’s horrified or proud. He thought for sure that Stiles would freeze up the way he did in high school, that the night at the party was just a fluke, but no… This Stiles wasn’t the Stiles he grew up with. Where he’d once been awkward, he’s suave and collected, calm. His words fall like melodies from his lips and he’s got all the posturing down. He’s a work of art really… a machine who could be deadly. What the hell had the prick done to him? If he ever met him, he’d be sure to kick him in the nuts.

Jamie came in, sliding close enough to brush most of her body against Stiles to hand over her papers to Alan and then leave again with a manicured hand sliding over Stiles’s waist.

“ _See you later, Stiles._ ”

“Later, Jamie.”

When he turns back, to glance at the flyer and think about a set list, he feels the room’s eyes looking at him. Derek has turned his head to look at him, staring at him. Scott is silent looking at him. Alan and Isaac are too and are blinking.

“What?” Stiles asks as they all look at him. Derek gives him his patented eyebrow raise and Stiles only looks around the room and looks away, turning with a frustrated look before stepping further into the room.

“I’m just here to ask a few questions about the assignment, Professor. I’ll be out of your hair in no time.”

“Of course, Stiles. You have other people to be into.”

Stiles feels the flush and blinks, a glance to Scott who’s still shocked and he moves to the side of the room to talk over his thoughts with Alan. Derek does his best not to look angry, but there’s a tension in his chest that he can’t shake. Words pressing to be said and feeling he doesn’t really want to acknowledge… like the fact that they know each other. The fact that he knows exactly what Stiles looks like flushed and so damn turned on… the fact that Stiles has seen him at his most vulnerable, splayed out and open, begging for release.

 _Son of a bitch,_ he thinks and turns back to the pages. Isaac looks at him with a tilt to his head. It’s a question, a suggestion of Stiles and it’s the last thing he wants to think about. He shrugs and  vaguely hears Stiles ask Scott about something.

“Yeah, I’ll meet you there.”

“Cool, later Scottie. Carry on strangers.”

His heart jolts as Stiles leaves the room. He isn’t sure how he’s still breathing, but he remembers what he was doing enough to get through the rest of his explanation and Alan nods.

“Not a bad plan. You’re going the right way.”

Derek nodded and collected the pages, Isaac and Scott headed out with him.

“That’s your roommate?” Isaac asked Scott. “I imagined him more…”

“Clumsy? He is.”

“Didn’t see it.”

Scott shrugged, “He’s been dealing with somethings, so he’s trying out a new leaf. But he’s clutzy at home. Face planting, tripping over the air so long as he’s not in the kitchen. It’s like he bottles up the klutz for specific times.”

“He’s rather smooth,” Isaac said. “What kind of leaf is he on?”

“Oh, sleep through as many people as he can while trying to figure out what that asshole was thinking.”

Isaac nodded, “Getting under a lot of people to get over someone. Nice policy.”

Scott shrugged but Derek says nothing, because it’s one thing to be told by Peter, to hear the rumors floating around campus, to hear his pack talk about Stiles, it’s another to see the monster he’s created. There’s none of that goofy, heart warming personality. It’s all coolness and perfect lines, watching and projection. He’s a mirror surface reflecting back what everyone wants to see… just like Derek.

_Oh god…_

“He’s going for just anyone?”

Scott shook his head, “He has rules about it. Boundaries for himself, he’s not in it to hurt anyone after all. As far as I know he’s only after big names or girls that won’t take a turn for the insane.”

“Ah.”

Scott promises to meet them in the library some other day when Isaac and Derek leave him. Isaac is about to bring up Devi but she appears in the hallway, talking in quiet tones to a few other girls. Derek catches “Stiles” “amazing” and “sex” before he shuts them out completely. Isaac however has probably heard it all and is grinning.

“Looks like you’ve got competition. He got Devi.”

Derek shrugs, laughs it off. There are plenty of others, but his stomach is rolling and for the next few days he sees and hears Stiles’s names with the same frequency, he hears the names of his pack members. Never the same circles really, or the same circumstance. Across gender lines, his mind is filled with it and a burning that he refuses to call jealousy. He goes to Jamie’s party at the sorority house and hears Stiles on the microphone playing through the setlist, flirting with the women who giggle at him and men who fuck him raw with stealthy glances. Stiles disappears at least twice during the party, the girls he disappeared with don’t reappear until thirty minutes later, flushed and whispering among their cliques. Derek knows what they’re talking about, he’s been on the receiving end of Stiles’s need to please after all.

Stiles doesn’t seem to be phased, running a hand through his hair, grinning and drinking as he’s waved into circles of guys. He doesn’t think about which guy he’ll disappear with or the fact that Stiles dances well regardless of the gender or size of his dance partner. None of that hesitant movement or jitteriness that Derek expected, smooth rocking and undulation of the hips that makes Derek think he’s putting on a show. It’s when their eyes meet from across the way, a large guy pressed up behind him that Derek knows that the show is for him, but to what end he can’t fathom. He leaves the party alone and he doesn’t ask the next morning if Stiles left alone because Erica is happy to tell him that he did.

Derek sees him again at a coffee shop with an acoustic guitar singing with one other guy playing with him. Before they play, he tells the people of the shop that it’s for the composition and public performance classes and the song is called “Sunrise”. The melody is something he hasn’t heard before. The accompaniment isn’t slow so much as paced. There’s something soulful about it that he can’t quite pin. Stiles seems to be waiting for something, or gearing up to sing, because the intro is slow and drifting until people are quiet and turn to listen.

“ _Call it all back makes no sense to me,_

_Lying here where you left me—_

_Oh, just lost in your eyes…”_

Derek didn’t know that Stiles could sing like that and as he’s waiting for his coffee he listens against his better judgment, because this … sounds like the Stiles he’d talked with for months. Like the Stiles that he left that morning. How odd that Stiles says he was lost in anyone’s eyes when those brown eyes had done everything but tell him that he was under a spell.

_“Swallow the pill, hormonal shaking—_

_Aftermath: my heart is quaking—_

_Oh...what have I done?”_

Derek swallows and stutters through his order and waits, patiently, praying that he’ll learn to tune it out, but he doesn’t and the song picks up the bridge is there and it’s pain embodied and given voice. It’s Kate and all those nights of faces without names and _Stiles_ begging him. It’s waking up alone after sleeping someone and knowing that they probably didn’t even wait until you were fully asleep before leaving.

_“Beneath the sheets of phantom lovers,_

_So far behind no one knows us._

_Oh, where’s the truth?”_

His heart is quaking and rather than taking a sip and pretending to be fine when he wanted to throw up his insides, he holds it in his hands and listens. Maybe in contrition, maybe because he’s a sadistic bastard, but he listens and each word feels like it’s being carved into his skin.

“ _Loved all the sense out of my head, down to the very last scent—_

_All the self out of me, yeah…_

_All the taste from of my mouth,_

_All the rhythm of my soul,_

_The song of my bones out of me…_

_All I hear is your crossfire melodies…_

_I thought it could be…”_

Derek takes the cup and he rushes out, as Stiles’s voice fades and the song ends. He hears clapping and knows it’s too late because those words are going to haunt him for the rest of his life he knows. Skidding, he makes it to the nearest bathroom, losing the cup in the fray to empty his stomach into a toilet, feeling more pitiful with every empty wretch and shudder. His stomach clenches, he heaves until there’s nothing left but his insides threatening to come up his throat, desperate to be free of the monster that inspired “Sunrise”.

_I thought it could be…_

He doesn’t sleep that night with that song circling his head and cursed the craving for coffee that had led him there in the first place. The next time he sees him, Erica is leading him over to the table at the diner. Everyone’s there for a change, their books forgotten as they start eating.

Aiden notices him first and his face is set in a hard glare before he starts eating and opens his book. Erica makes introductions though Stiles has met most of them already. He shakes Stiles’s hand and their eyes meet, but it’s Stiles that breaks it first, turning to answer Isaac’s question. He just came from a composition class with his partner, but she had things to do so he’d taken up Erica on her invite. Derek knows that he’s got a culinary class next and will have to run across campus after than to reach his psych class on time.

They laugh and talk, Erica and Stiles flirt shamelessly and Derek is torn between them all getting along so well and trying keep Stiles as far away from him as possible. The farther away, the more Derek can call him the twink and blot out anything more than the fact that they’d slept together one time. One mind-blowing, world altering time that’s been haunting Derek’s dreams and becoming the only way he’ll get off hard enough that he’s satisfied. Stiles excuses himself, getting up and walking away to head to class.

Ethan laughed, “He’s fucking hilarious.”

Aiden didn’t agree or disagree, after breaking his plastic ware in his hand. He excused himself and practically ran away from the table. Ethan went after him as Erica and Isaac nodded, contemplative and knowing.

“Papa wolf, one of your pups is upset,” Erica notifies him and Isaac scoffs.

He promises to talk to Aiden tonight and manages to survive the rest of the day before kidnapping Aiden to go pick up food. They’re walking back towards the Camaro with Aiden says it.

“Are you going to invite Stiles into the pack?”

Derek frowns and turns,  “Stiles? Skinny, defenseless, Stiles?”

“I’m not the only one thinking it, I’m just the only one who’s saying it.”

“Choosing Stiles? Why not take someone bigger, stronger, someone with a little more…”

Derek didn’t have a word for it, but the one his mind supplied was _need._ And he heard Peter’s words telling him that he’d become the monster that had created him. Stiles had been a virgin to it all and he’d come into contact with Derek. Mind you he hadn’t been with Stiles as Derek the Alpha, but as Derek Hale… He’d walked out and ignored and treated him like the alpha though.  He hears the words of that song in the coffee shop ringing in his ears.

_Just laying here listless in the midnight sun…_

“Right…”Derek breathes. “It’s been a thought, but I brought you out here to talk to you. What’s going on?”

Aiden remains quiet for a moment before sighing and sinking to sit on the bench between them. Derek joins him and waits to hear what Aiden has to say.

“I fucked up.” Aiden said.

Derek smiled, “We all do. What happened?”

“I slept with her… frequently.”

Derek nodded, “Oh?”

“Left things at her apartment.”

Derek nodded.

“Told her I couldn’t anymore.”

Derek nodded.

“She offered me a key.”

Derek looked at him, “And?”

“Told her we weren’t.”

“And you regret it.”

Aiden nodded miserably, “It’s why I’ve been in such a mood.”

“You feel something?” Derek asked. “Tell me about her.”

Aiden sighed and leaned back, opening his mouth to talk but not entirely sure what he was saying. It sounded like praise and garbled noise to him, but not Lydia. There was no way to explain Lydia really. Beautiful , sure, but it was her quick-witted tongue, her keen eyes, and that brain that moved so fast it had him spinning sometimes. It was the way she looked at him when they were on her couch at night, the way they talked and just existed together without words sometimes that he couldn’t describe, couldn’t forget either.

…Didn’t really want to forget.

“I can’t have it both ways,” Aiden said.

“Then you should probably make a decision and fix it before its too late.”

Derek grimaced at the words, hearing Peter’s smug _plagiarism is against the honor code, Derek._ He tried not to think of Stiles when Aiden was obviously in love with this girl. For heaven’s sake, he couldn’t be in love with Stiles. Derek didn’t know what love way but as Aiden continued to talk he heard his own late night thoughts, his own ruminations about Stiles in Aiden’s words at that feeling that he was pretty sure had been scorched out of him was there in Aiden’s voice, in his own chest and screaming beneath six feet of solid glass.

“Maybe,” Aiden said. “Or maybe it’s already too late.”

“Won’t know until you ask.”

Their number gets called and they collect the food and head back to Derek’s apartment. When they arrive, the board game has already been set up and the shit-talking was well underway.  He was sure they were one “Sorry!” away from a wrestling match and when Erica bumped Ethan, he was right.  He laughed at their childishness and the fact that Erica came out victorious as she so often did.

When they all leave except for Isaac, Derek goes straight to his bathroom and dry heaves into the toilet bowl. His stomach tightens, he wretches, but nothing comes up. Thank god he didn’t eat dinner, feigning having eaten earlier and nursing a soda while the rest of the pack ate.

“You okay Derek?” Isaac asked from outside Derek’s bedroom.

Derek coughs, trying to get the not quite bile burn from the back of his throat out.

“I’m alright,” he says loud enough for the roughness of his voice to be heard. “Probably just ate something bad.”

Isaac watches him, not moving as Derek takes deep breaths and hunches over the bowl. He doesn’t move, maybe because he knows that Isaac, like Erica, sees and hears more than what he says. They’ve known him the longest, been around him the most to know all of his tells, to see through the slits of his reflective armor. To think that he had almost let Stiles get close enough to read him the way Erica and Isaac did.

“You want ginger or vodka?” Isaac asked.

Derek chuckled, resting his head on his forehead and breathing.

“Neither.”

Isaac lets out a low sound, “I’m calling Erica.”

Erica walks up the stairs from her apartment on the second floor in her pajamas, all curls and late night softness. She’s taken off her make-up and lowered her shields essentially. Isaac is in the kitchen when she opens the door and sees Derek lying prone on the couch.

“Alpha,” she says softly, trailing a hand through his hair. He looks at her with eyes so pained its making her sick. “Please?”

“That thing… that I told you about,” he starts and Erica nods.

If he was referring to her it had to be serious, “Nightmares?”

He shook his head, “Not about her.”

Erica nods and he breaths, letting her settle herself on the couch and pillow his head in her lap. She smells like hot water and pomegranate scented soap. She’d probably been in the bathtub when Isaac called.

“Is this… about the triple major you disappeared with for a weekend?”

He nods and Isaac rounds the couch to bring hot chocolate.

“He’s making you physically ill?”

“Something like that…” Derek said.

“That’s not good,” Erica states. “You having a visceral reaction to him isn’t good. Where is this dude? What’d he do?”

Derek chuckled, “Sexed my brain.”

Erica’s eyes widened and Isaac’s jaw dropped, “What?”

“Sexed my brain,” he gritted out.

“Bad like a cold or like the flu—“

“Like the clap.”

Isaac grimaced, “I don’t think you should compare that to an STI but alright. So what are you going to do?”

“Get over it.”

Erica rolled her eyes, “There’s obviously more to this than you first told us. Spill.”

Derek isn’t sure why he’s telling them this, but of course he’d thought the same thing when he’d told Peter about the twink. He manages not to use Stiles’s name while explaining their meeting and the lead up to the night in question.

Erica hears what he says, but hears the large gap between what was being said and not. Derek was terrified, sickened by something, and trying to run away from it, but it wasn’t working.

“So you know that class I told you should take?” Erica said and Derek snorted.

“The one on human sexuality?”

“Yep, you’re enrolled in it right?”

“Yes, Erica. I am.”

She nodded, “Good. Maybe you’ll learn something. I know you’re not going to listen to me when I say you should just call the guy and have really good _I love you and I’m sorry_ sex, but that’s what you should do.”  
Derek wished he could see it just that simply and that his mind didn’t see it that simply. Because the next few days were like that, hot searing dreams of Stiles in his bed. A fever pitched jerk off session that was somehow more fulfilling than the sex he’d been having, but nowhere near as satisfying as that night with Stiles had been and a constant state of sickness that made ginger tea and  Even his sleeping mind wanted to break rules. He swore off sex in his own bed since Kate and held that rule fast.

He drove Isaac and Erica to school the next morning and shuffled his way to his Human Sexuality class. It was a late starting class of about thirteen people so they were all situated around a table. Derek was one of the first few to arrive and glance around the table to get a good look at the people in the class. The professor hadn’t arrived yet either, so they were still chatting about why they were taking the class.

Scratching his face, he took a seat in the middle of the left side and continued to sip from his thermos: ginger tea today, though he was less queasy, he didn’t want to chance it. He’d eaten a light breakfast and had generally been skimping on all his meals since the first night of wretching…

And then his worst nightmare came true: Stiles walked through the door, fumbling with a container of food and sliding around to the other side of the table to sit down. He was a little flushed, his hair messy, and his sleeves rolled up. He’d probably just come from a culinary class if the delicious smell was anything to go by. His stomach cramped uncomfortably as Stiles looked at him.

 _Derek,_ his mouth moved, with no sound. His throat worked and he tried to look less shocked and more relaxed, but it was too late and Derek was sure he was definitely going to be sick.

“That smells _amazing_ what is it?”

Stiles looked at the girl to his left with a warm smile, oddly Stiles the triple major and not Stiles the predator.

“Rotisserie chicken,” he said. “Want some?”

“Oh my god, can we be best friends?”

He laughed and Derek watched with interest. Sleeves rolled up, he seemed relax and sleep soft, flushed probably from the heat of a stove, or happy, he wasn’t sure as he opened the container and the smell hit Derek full in the face.  His stomach grumbled and clenched.

“You want some?” Stiles asked looking at him.

Derek swallowed, a peace offering maybe? A trick, maybe. He wasn’t sure, but he nodded slowly.

Stiles cut him a hunk and a leg and placed it in a cup, sliding it across the table to him with a grin.

“Cause Erica tells me you can eat like a professional.”

Derek snorted and thanked him, taking the cup and eating silently. It didn’t take long for the entire chicken to be finished off and by then the professor and the rest of the students had shown up and Derek felt less queasy and a little more focused.

“You’re too big of a guy to eat just yogurt for breakfast,” Stiles said, shaking his head. “I’m totally telling Erica.”

Derek rolled his eyes as the professor began to introduce herself, pass out syllabi and other “boring states of affairs” before pulling up the presentation detailing the  misconceptions of sexuality that pervade society today. Heterosexuality versus Homosexuality and the gray area as bisexuality.

“Forget all of this,” she said. “And you may learn something new about yourself.”

Derek wasn’t sure why it made him uncomfortable to hear that but as the presentation continued as the basic overview of what she called the “Asexual Spectrum”, he couldn’t stop listening. Most of the terms he’d heard in passing, but the more was said the more prominent the impression “panromantic” , “Gray-a”, and “Demisexual” seemed to be imprinted on his brain.

Their first assignment was to write a reflection on their own sexuality including how they arrived to their denomination based on the information given. It was supposed to be an exercise in how open the class was going to be… Derek thought it was just horribly invasive.

“It’s a sexuality class, papa wolf,” Erica said , lounging on his couch as Derek frowned at the assignment sheet, the page he was  supposed to be filling with his thoughts was blank. The cursor winked at him.

“Doesn’t mean it’s a class about _my_ sexuality.”

Erica shrugged, “Stiles is having a hard time with it as well.”

Derek didn’t speak but breathed, “How am I supposed to answer this? I had a lot of sex.”

Erica smiles slowly and Derek realizes his mistake and grumbles.

“Had?”

“Drop it, Erica.”

She shrugged and went back to reading her book, “You’re looking less queasy at least.”

“Thanks,” he said wryly.

Erica didn’t say anything for a while, but when Derek began typing she smiled. There was hope for her alpha yet and if she finished this chapter before seven she could go an invade Boyd’s life for a few hours before he was off to his night job. Yes, things were definitely looking up.

At least, that’s what she thought.


	7. I Wear These Tears and Pretend They’re Not There

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lydia's armor, Stiles's war, Aiden's jealousy, Derek's fear.

“ _Damn…_ ” is what Aiden hears while leaning against the wall and waiting for Erica to get done speaking with her professor the next day.

When he turns his head, he’s not sure why he can’t breathe, only that he can’t and he can’t look away either. _Lydia_ was dressed. It wasn’t that Lydia ever wore the standard college fare to class, she was consistently dressed immaculately every day, but today was different.

Bustier top in red and white strips, hip length vest that’s cut to accentuate her waist, a high waist  pleated shorts that allowed a sliver of skin between the two hems, her lips are painted trouble red and her heels match. She struts down the hallway like her own personal run way, carrying a large tote with her textbooks in it. Her hair is that sexy curly it usually only gets after Aiden has run his hands throughout it all night. She looks like sex and trouble whispering _come play, boys._

Aiden stops himself from wondering who had been running their hands through her hair, gripping it, holding her, or kissing her since he’d broken it off and hopes that it’s just that day. One of those days she has to meet her mother for lunch and needs the extra armor. He refuses to think of a date, but some other impossible thing, a model shoot, anything other than date. But it doesn’t stop there, it’s the whole week of Lydia dressing leaps and bounds about her average apparel. Wrap dresses that hug every curve of her, colorful jeans and halter tops. It’s maddening to say the least, because she usually refrained from wearing them if he’d left a mark somewhere, but she was markless, an expanse of unmarked skin.

When Stiles sees her the first time, strutting towards him, he smiles suggestively at her and offers her his arm.

“Oh, hell in high heels, I’ll have to dress better just to escort you to class.”

She laughs and takes his arm, “Not if you’re the only one offering.”

But he does dress to her level for the next few days, smart cut blazers, jeans and Aiden thinks they’re making a thing of it. He can’t understand how Stiles’s scores are growing and Lydia being okay with it when she’d try and offer Aiden a key… Maybe Stiles had accepted the key? Maybe there was nothing there at all. The last thought was impossible, if only because he always saw them together, touching, intimately close and comfortable. He made it a life mission not to think about what Stiles did to her at night… It didn’t work very long.

 It’s another few days before Stiles gets the official invite by Erica to come hang out at the pack’s gathering place. Stiles is planning to swing by for a little bit with the excuse that he had something to do. While there, he’d get some recon on Aiden (even though Lydia didn’t ask) and Derek. Lydia and Kira are excited and Danny and Scott can’t believe that he’s serious continuing this, watching him shrug into his red and black plaid shirt, the one that Lydia swears is his best and is just enough casual to make him look nonchalant, but still highlight his aesthetic strengths.

“What happens if you get hurt, Stiles?”

“Then I’ll learn,” and that was sort of the end of it. He breathes, chanting those words that had really meant more to him than anything.

 _It is only necessary to have courage, for strength without self-confidence is useless._ He was broken, torn up inside, but he was courageous and charging into battle. He wore the scars not as a shield, but as badges of honor, not trying to conquer them, but submitting to them and he breathed. He drenched himself in his pain, let it wash over him, accept it and now he was bearing it in the hopes to alleviate it at last. It was a game he was playing to win, everything on the board. The winner took it all after all, those were the sort of terms that Derek had set up and he was playing by Derek’s rules.

The drive to the address is short and as he rides the elevator up, he has the distinct feeling that he’s about to see where Derek lives and that’s an odd jolt of interest. His psychology brain is coming to the forefront as he walks to the door, room 301, and knocks. The door opens and its Erica who’s grinning at him, eyeing him.

“Don’t you look delectable.”

Stiles grinned, “I didn’t bring sweets, but I thought eye-candy would make up for it.”

She laughed and pulled him inside steering him towards the dining room. The apartment was sort of sparse, the only real mark that someone lived there was the gigantic over stuffed couch.  He wasn’t sure how he knew that the apartment belonged to Derek, but he did and it spoke volumes. Sure his own apartment hadn’t been fully furnished, but there were the personal touches that were missing in Derek’s apartment. Hell, Peter, as far as he knew, was very similar to Derek in a lot of ways and even he had _art_ on his walls along with his pride and joy of a kitchen. He rounded the corner to see Aiden, Ethan, and Isaac playing cards, Erica’s hand was face down on the table and another was set as well. He assumed it was Derek’s.

“Hey Stiles, welcome, want anything?”

Stiles shook his head, “I’ve got plans with friends later. Just stopped by to say hi.”

Isaac grinned, “Awesome, so you and Jamie.”

He snorted, “What about Jamie?”

“What’d you do?” Isaac asked. “There was a definite brick wall there.”

“I can’t imagine you being her type,” Derek said skeptically, coming up behind him from the kitchen.

Stiles regards him, wearing his standard grey Henley and sweatpants. He’s wearing Darth Vader socks and trying his best not to look as relaxed as he obviously is. The permanent frown that existed outside wasn’t there, he looked almost soft and sleepy, comforted and comfortable. The apartment is obviously Derek’s and as sparse as it is, it’s his safe zone. He’s sure that he’s the only trophy that’s ever been in his apartment, and more than that he knows he’s about to get more information than he bargained for.

“Derek,” Stiles scoffs at him. “You wouldn’t know her type if it punched you in the face. Have you talked to her?”

“Of course I’ve talked to her.”

“Not flirt,” Stiles said. “Talk.”

“Are you saying all you do is talk?”

Stiles smiled and it’s an empty knife in Derek’s chest, chilling him, “Yeah. No gimmicks. I’m just honest.”

“Calling me a liar?”

Erica looks between the two, more than stunned at the hostility she’s seeing. It isn’t like Derek to be hostile towards anyone unless there’s good reason… especially in his apartment. It was the only time that Derek was completely relaxed and completely anti-confrontation. The tenseness that had begun to sneak into his posture as soon as Stiles announced his presence was telling and she was sure that Stiles’s keen brown eyes were aware of that.

Stiles tilted his head, “Are you?”

Derek’s eyebrows draw together tensely, “I have no need to lie.”

“Good to know,” Stiles said and steps around him. “Jamie likes rock music.”

Derek tilted his head as Stiles continued talking, “She likes art though she’s terrible at it. She’s a romantic at heart, but sex for just sex is easier. She’s of the mindset that Mr. Right For Jamie isn’t going to care that she has experience under her belt.”

As Stiles goes on to give a full dossier on Jamie as a person, he smirks at Derek’s stunned expression. “Talk. When’s the last time you talked to someone and listened?”

“A triple major,” he says and wishes that he didn’t because it’s like giving Stiles a loaded gun without a safety. “Not too long ago.”

Stiles doesn’t miss a beat, “You should do it more often so maybe one day you can say _vixi._ ”

He felt stunned, flicked in the nose and punched in the gut all at one time, but not shot in the chest the way that Stiles could have. _Vixi_ , he thought. Stiles taught him what it meant once and encouraged him to read a translation of something… Casanova’s memoirs… Casanova, holy shit, Stiles had modeled his persona after Casanova! Well, that made fucking sense. There was none of the darkness that hung over Derek’s head around Stiles. If he could see it, obviously others could as well. Stiles’s persona had the sort of freedom that Derek thought he would find in bed hopping. But _vixi_ , what the hell did that mean again? Something about living he was sure about that.

Erica made herself turn and leave them to their conversation, distracting the rest of the room with the prospect of the game. Stiles would remember to make her something extra special when he got a chance for it.

“Vixi?” Derek asked crossing his arms. “And how are you measuring that?”

“By the board, of course,” he said with a smile, spreading his arms in a grand gesture. Derek couldn’t help but imagine a chess board appearing between those wickedly sensual hands. “I’ll show you the whole board if you let me and what it means to be a free agent upon it.”

Derek’s stomach tightened at the word free. He remember what _free_ could mean…He’d been out of his mind free, lost in some other state of existence that he barely remembered what was said in between pleas for more. It was all just a jumbled haze of pleasure and openness and more pleasure, a pleasure he hadn’t ever achieved before or after.

Stiles held his gaze until Derek broke it. Yeah, it made him feel a bit like a coward, but whatever. He rounded the table and took up his seat. Stiles  took a chair and sat on it backward, watching a few rounds of the game and talking about nothing and everything.

About an hour or so in, he checked his watch and told Erica that he had to head out if he meant to make his prior engagements. He looked at Derek and left. In that gaze, Derek could hear another one of those random quotes Stiles had told him once. When he realized that maybe the man was attracted to him and maybe Stiles was far more insightful that he thought.

_Man becomes a slave the moment he allows his actions to be ruled by passion._

He almost laughed and then he did, he was sure that Stiles could hear him as he left the apartment and Aiden followed him. Ruled by passion? A free agent? At least Derek’s passion had freed him from depression and if he thought that Stiles was a free agent then he was wrong. He was there because of what Derek had done. The whole board, he thought. Stiles wouldn’t know how to maneuver on the board, or that there was even a board, if Derek hadn’t been in his life and now he’s engaged in some odd game of chess.

Well, fine. There was no fixing this with Stiles still pretending to be on the board. He’d have to throttle Stiles it seemed to get him to see exactly what he could become. Let him be an example for what he didn’t want to become, let Stiles see what he thought he wanted in its truest form and understand. If he had common sense he’d run the other way as fast as he could.

“What’s so funny?” Isaac asked.

“He’s in.”

*

Stiles makes his way back towards the front door and makes himself breathe deeply. Way to go Stilinski, announcing his angle to Derek. His heart is beating so damn hard. _A triple major, not too long ago,_ Derek had talked to him. At least that was one answer down, now for the rest. The challenge was set, the board was set and they were playing. It was Derek’s move now. He opens the door and yells over his shoulder that he’s leaving. It’s Aiden who has followed him to the door and down the hall to the elevator. Aiden steps in with him, glaring at him.

“What?” Stiles asks when the door closes.

“How do you know Lydia?”

Stiles tilts his head and smirks, “What’s it to you?

Aiden growls at him and Stiles smirks, “If you’re asking me if I have plans for her, I do. We’re actually hanging out tomorrow.”

“Don’t touch her, Stilinski. I swear to god--”

“Can’t help it, you know clubs. The buddy system and all that… and dancing… going to get _lots_ of touching done.”

Aiden moves to strangle him as the elevator doors open at the ground floor. Stiles recedes further into himself, unaffected by Aiden’s aggression and he’s sure that it pisses him off more.

“Not that it should matter to you.  I didn’t know the pack were so possessive of past trophies.”

“What your angle, Stilinski?” he growls and Stiles smiles.

“Goodnight Aiden,” he gets in his jeep and pulls of and he knows that Aiden is glaring at him as he pulls out of the parking lot and down the street.

Aiden gets back upstairs to see Derek and Erica laughing.

“Apparently, Stilinski passed the papa wolf test.”

Aiden wants to grit his teeth, because he’d been the one to suggest Stiles.

“As you said,” Derek said with a sly smile. “He’s got potential.”

*

Stiles arrives back to the apartment with a grin, jogging up the steps to announce his triumph to the people inside.

“They said something?”

“I’ve declared war,” Stiles said. “And pissed off Aiden apparently.”

Lydia says nothing, but they share a look.

“Thinks you’re competition I bet.”

Stiles shrugged, “We’ll see. Now, are we still going out for Kira’s birthday?”

“Hell yes,” she said. “My midterm is tomorrow morning and holy heaven I’ll need a drink. And cake and fun.”

Stiles nods, “I can make at least one of those happen.”

He ends up baking for her birthday and the next day, after Kira’s hell of a midterm, they’re in the apartment getting ready. Danny has a late evening assignment to finish so he’d be joining them them after he was done. Because Stiles doesn’t really drink, they pile into Stiles’s jeep and ride to the club near campus. The cake is already there and they’ve reserved a table under Kira’s name. Friends from her other classes have decorated the table  to their liking and when they enter, Stiles knows that it’s going to be a night of revelry much needed to blot out the cloudy haze of depression.

It also happens to be the pack’s night out and they ride together with the exception of the twins who always take their bikes. The club is packed, the music is loud and as usual the first stop is the bar. Aiden takes a seat and orders while the others stay standing. They grab their drinks and vanish, leaving Aiden at the bar. Alone, he takes out the keychain with steady hand. He stares at it, replays the moment on the stair landing. Her movements were so smooth, unaffected, her eyes had gone cold and closed, and he was still reeling from it. It had been weeks. He should have just left the damn thing on the ground, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

 It’s about thirty minutes before Erica circles back and he’s still sitting at the bar. He closes his fist and turns it fingers down when she leans against the bar beside him.“Are you okay?” Erica asked. He hadn’t moved from his spot at the bar all night, hadn’t managed to finish his first drink either.

“Yeah… just… out of it. Not feeling it.”

Ethan shoulders through the crowd and claps him on the shoulder, “You okay bro? You seem down.”

“Yeah, fine. Just need some time.”

“Did you fail your test?”

Aiden snorted, “Something like that… it was pretty bad.”

Erica nods and lets it slide. She doesn’t bring up the object he’s gripping in his hand and trying to hide. It looks like a keychain, but she has no idea of the significance it could hold for him. She wants to ask but Aiden is the more guarded of the two and he’s not drunk enough to ask personal questions.

“Hey look,” Ethan nods towards the door.

Stiles and Lydia are coming through the door with a group of people that they vaguely recognize from around campus. Lydia has his hand in hers, lifted over the crowd. A crown on the Asian woman’s head, Scott has his hands on her hips, following her through the crowd. Aiden watches him, his hand gripping the key chain and the glass in his other hand tightly. Ethan has left but Erica is still there watching him track Lydia through the crowd. Stiles takes the hands of the crowned woman and Lydia’s hands and leads them through the crowd to a booth where a few more people were and a cake was situated. Another man fights through the crowd, they wave him over, hugs are exchanged. He looks like an islander of some sort, he talks to them before making his way with Scott towards the bar. Scott and the islander are giving the bartender directions to the table before making their way through the crowd to the table where the first round of shots are being taken and cake is being cut. It’s small, but artful from what he can tell. He meets Lydia’s gaze as she’s in the middle of a laugh for just a moment, before he downs his drink.

Stiles and Lydia dance together once, before he relinquishes her to another man in the crowd and finds someone else to dance with. Scott and the crowned woman stay together for as long as Aiden watches them, but Stiles and Lydia come back together every once in a while and they’re laughing.  When Stiles slings an arm around her shoulder and gives her a kiss on the cheek, he turns and gets up, putting on his helmet, and rushes out the door. It’s the sly look on Stiles’s face that pisses him off the most. He doesn’t go straight to his apartment, but stops at the gym on campus and gets on the treadmill.

He imagines punching in Stiles’s face until he can’t laugh, until his face is so black and blue that no one recognizes him. He thinks of breaking that arms and those hands that held Lydia’s. He imagines stomping Stiles into the bust for touching her at all. He imagines torture and blood and Stiles screaming for a mercy that will not come. The treadmill slows to a stop and it’s Ethan leaning on the treadmill looking at him.

“You hate running,” he said matter-of-factly. “Want to tell me what’s up, bro?”

*

After Kira’s birthday, Aiden makes himself scarce avoiding everyone and anything, but it doesn’t work. Derek isn’t much better, preferring to hole himself up in his apartment than be seen on campus. The fact that he has such a small class with Stiles is problematic, especially as they start talking through their reflection essays and the fact that they will be the core of their final papers.

It’s Sunday, the sky is threatening a storm, and after the pack has left his apartment when the knock sounds on the door. It can’t be one of the pack as they all have a key, but DErke isn’t sure who else it could be so he opens the door to see Stiles looking towards the window at the end of the hallway.  His sweatshirt is barely clinging to his shoulders, too big and he’s carrying his backpack. All in all he looks like the Stiles Derek met in the coffee shop sans the glasses.

It’s too painful to continue looking at.

When he turns to look at Derek, Stiles blinks and slides on a smile. Derek turns from the door and Stiles follows, closing the door.

“Bit of a rude welcome,” he quips. “You didn’t have to let me in.”

“You’re pack now,” Derek said. “I don’t generally kick out pack.”

Stiles nodded and looked around, listening for other people, but the apartment is silent. The rain storm is the only sound and the crack of lightning. “Where is everyone?”

“Gone.”

“Oh,” Stiles said nodding. “Guess there’s no need to pretend that we don’t—”

“What do you want Stiles?”

“Are you asking me as a trophy or a pack mate?”

Derek growls, “Don’t. What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m playing the game,” Stiles said. “Same as you.”

Derek snorted, “You? You were a virgin, Stiles. Not a single kiss, not a single touch and you want to play?  You think you understand what it is to play because of one night? You think you understand? You don’t.”

“Don’t I?” He asked. “You’re only sleeping around because you’re afraid of a real relationship.”

“Me afraid? I’m not the one chasing after something that isn’t there because the truth is too painful.”

Stiles tilts his head thoughfully and Derek prays that those brown eyes don’t  see as much as they do, but they do. They _always_ do.

“Isn’t that what you’re doing?” Stiles asked. “Chasing phantoms?”

Derek doesn’t say anything. He can’t say anything, but step back as Stiles steps forward and practically stalks him down the hallway, holding his gaze and daring him to break it.

“Knowingly? Willingly? Chasing phantoms, knowing their phantoms but it’s safer—“

Another step forward, another step back.

“Shut up.”

Another step forward, another step back.

“—than owning up and turning around to face the real thing—“

Another step forward, another step back and Derek feels the solidness of his couch.

“Shut up.”

Another step forward.

“Because it hurts—“

Another step forward.

“Stiles I swear to God—“

Another step forward.

“And you’re terrified that you don’t deserve it.”

The protest died in his throat and this close he could smell Stiles, the same as before. Tinged with the smell of dinner and dessert, he’s probably been cooking before he came over.  Stiles is staring at him, watching for the first flinch, the first concession of space. The very first and last and Derek doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe.

“But you do.”

And that pisses Derek off that he’s glaring at Stiles, torn between punching him and running away, but Stiles doesn’t seem affected by the aggression on his face or the way he straightens and draws himself to his full height.

“Fuck you.”

“You already did,” Stiles replied.

At the core his rage, Stiles’s words are an ice pick shoved so far into his gut, he’s sure his internal temperature is dropping, his lips are turning blue, and he’s going into hypothermic shock.

 _Don’t,_ he thinks. _Don’t back down. It’s for his own good._

So Derek breathes and starts fighting. 

He’ll regret it but right now it’s the only course of action if he going to get Stiles to go away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sort of a cliff hanger, but I wanted the pause.


	8. Failure, Find Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek proves himself wrong and flashbacks. Lydia and Stiles practice. Aiden learns the purpose of the pack. And Allison receives sage advice from Lydia and Stiles.

 “You think you know me?” Derek growled glaring at him as light flashed through the window. “You think you know _anything?_   You don’t know shit about me, Stiles. Nothing more than what I’ve told you.”

“A whole lot more than you’ve told any other trophy,” Stiles said. “A whole lot more than you think.”

Derek snorted, “You were a virgin, it took a little more work to get you into bed and wow… you could have had me fooled.”

Stiles waits and watches Derek’s expression turn evil. His eyes are burning.

“I mean the way you sucked cock like a slut? The way you begged for it? I could have sworn that you were the school whore… but I could taste your nervousness, Stiles. Got to say, think you’ve turned me on to going after virgins.”

The words bite but Stiles ignores it, feeling it like a glancing blow across his face. His eyes narrow and he knows that Derek thinks he’s going to back down.

“Are you demonizing yourself for my benefit or yours?”

Derek’s heart trips and he swears the world went black for longer than a second.

“I don’t have to,” he growled. “I’m already a monster and the sooner you realize that and give up, the better off you’ll be. I don’t want you Stiles. I don’t date. I don’t love. I don’t _care_. So stop this.”

“Why warn me if you don’t care?”

“I don’t.”

“Why try so hard to push me away if you don’t want me?”

“I don’t.”

“Why are you lying?”

“I’m not!” He said. “You were a fuck, a game, a trophy on my shelf—plain and simple.  You were a hot twink that I wanted to fuck, I did—end of story.”

But that isn’t what his eyes are saying every time they meet in the loft around people, or his voice the way he talks to him. That isn’t what he was saying when they were having sex.

_Stiles, don’t stop. So damn good…_

_Are you okay?_

_Am I hurting you?_

_Tell me when._

_Shit, Stiles you’re going to be the death of me._

Derek is shoving at those memories, the way he’d held Stiles when he sunk into him, the way he made Stiles look at him when he came, the way he’d done the same when Stiles stroked into him as much as it terrified him.

 _Thank you for letting me take you apart too,_ Stiles had said to him. _You’re amazing._

 _You take it so well,_ Derek had told him. _So deep, so good, Stiles. You’re amazing._

“Okay,” Stiles said, his eyes brimming with tears and Derek is thinking, really thinking, about dropping the whole charade, but he doesn’t only stares resolutely refusing to acknowledge the burning in his eyes.

Stiles swallows past the lump in his throat and he knows for sure that the flash of lightning is showing Derek exactly how close he is to crying, how fucked up and confused he is. How empty he’s making himself. When the first tear slides and his jaw trembles, he knows that he needs to leave before he’s doing something stupid like giving into the desire to hug Derek, to kiss him, to curl up and die right there.

“You’re wrong,” he says. “But I can see that… you aren’t going to acknowledge that. Not yet.”

“There’s nothing to acknowledge, Stiles,” Derek snarls. “This is who I am.”

Stiles blinks and feels the tears rolling. There’s another knock on his door and Stiles doesn’t move as Derek moves to answer it. He wipes his face and recedes behind his persona as a brunette woman follows Derek into the apartment.

“… I just couldn’t stop thinking of you. A friend of mine told me where you lived and I...”

Stiles turns towards the door but not before he hears the woman saying, “ _Just once more._ ”

There’s the sound of a kiss and Stiles forces his legs to walk casually out, “Later Derek.”

Derek hears the salute and when the door closes, he pulls back looking down at her. She’s confused and anxious and Derek sees nothing, feels nothing.

“You shouldn’t have come here.”

“I just needed to see you.”

He frowns and looks at her hand, she pulls it back quickly but he catches her hand and inspects the ring on her finger.

“You’re married.”

“Engaged actually.”

“Were you engaged then?”

“Does it matter?” She asked his eyes glare at her, flashing with the lightning outside the window. “No… I wasn’t.”

He nods and feels a bit of relief from that. At least he doesn’t have to add homewrecker to the list of monstrosities.

“But I—“

“You should go.”

“It didn’t mean anything?”

Derek looked at her incredulously, “I fucked you at a party. Not in a room, not on a bed, on a _bench_ at the back of a party. No, it didn’t mean anything. It was sex, pure and simple. And you shouldn’t be here.”

“But he’s not—”

“That,” he starts. “Isn’t my problem. You’re engaged, you said yes, and you show up at some man’s house you had an hour’s long sexual encounter with at a party, while _dating_ , to actually cheat on your fiancé?”

“We were taking a break then and I just—wasn’t it good for you?”

Derek shrugged, shaking his head helplessly, “Honestly, I can’t even remember. There have been so many since you, that meant just as much—sex, pleasure, no attachments, no emotions, purely physical. I couldn’t even remember your name if you asked me.”

Her jaw dropped.

“Now,” he said. “If you understand the kind of monster you’ve come seeking, go to your fiancée, blow him like your life depends on it, ride his dick until he’s shaking in his skin and live out the rest of your life guilt free that at least you technically didn’t cheat on a man that probably loves you. Don’t come back here, Jennifer.”

She turns and marches out and he breathes out with a chuckle. Stiles was right. He did remember her name… and all the others. He remembered their names. He just didn’t use them because it hurt to do so. It hurt to think that they were people, because he was using them the same way he’d been used…

“Son of a bitch,” he growled.

*

Stiles crumbles into tears when he gets into the jeep. He doesn’t try to stop them, he doesn’t try and drive yet either, just lets the words wash over him, lets them hurt, he lets them in and swirl. He submits to them. He can’t breathe as the panic attack begins and he shakes, but grips his hands on the steering wheel, forcing himself to breathe. He lets the pain wash over him and then he replays it. He dials down the words and listens to the tone, to every hitch, the placement of the breaths, his eyes the way they tremble, the glossiness of them and he breathes.

Derek was hurting, lashing out in confusion and a pain so deep that he didn’t see a way out. He knew what that felt like. He was doing it to make himself hurt more. What could he possibly be running from? What guilt could be so happy that it’s driving him to hurt himself over and over again?

He’s still there when the woman comes downstairs not even five minutes later and he feels a smile. He didn’t sleep with her. He knew that if Derek really didn’t care, he’d have fucked her and sent her on her way. She didn’t even look like she’d been kissed properly.

He looks up to where Derek’s windows are and then starts the jeep, turning on his fog lights and drives to his apartment. Derek had given him an opening straight to the king. He’d show Derek exactly what he was fucking with. No interest in him? Derek was blinding himself if he thought that was true and Stiles would sleep through the whole school, guilt free, if that’s what it took to make Derek see that.

He’d show Derek what board he’d been playing and then the board that Stiles was playing. He’d show him exactly what the game is and beat down every wall he had to until Derek admitted it. He laughed. Derek thought love was a game about scores. Thought winning meant having the most trophies. Stiles was playing for something a whole lot bigger than a string of one night stands, had a whole lot more to fight for than a bunch of meaningless fucks.

Derek had no chance in hell and he would tell him that as many times as he needed to.

*

They were meeting at the parking lot and Aiden was already running late, so he decided to cut through the theater to make the trip faster. It’s always open because people practice there at all hours of the night.  He shouldn’t have given that the building made him think of Lydia and he was trying to avoid those thoughts as much as possible.  When he opened the door, the sound of music cut off welcomes him. There’s a frustrated sigh from the stage. Curious, Aiden walked through the double door to peak  into the theater hall, but not to be seen or heard.  He wonders who’s in the sound booth, but Aiden knows the woman on the stage. The lights change and he watches the way it follows the curls of strawberry blond over her shoulder.  She’s wearing a large shirt, hanging off one shoulder, soft sweatpants, the ones she wears when she’s studying. It isn’t what she’d been wearing earlier.

“Don’t force it,” a voice says through the theater speakers. “Just _feel_ it…”

She huffed, “I can’t!”

A door opens and Aiden watches Stiles jog down the ramp and leap on to stage. He takes her hands in his and tells her to breath. They take deep breaths together, heads pressed together. It’s intimate in a way that makes Aiden sick.

“It’s alright Lyds, I know it hurts.” She nods slightly, “Let it hurt. Trust me.”

She nods again and lets out a shaky breath before turning to the microphone stand. Stiles jumps from the stage and heads up to the door he exited, not noticing Aiden standing in an aisle. Aiden feels his face heating, angry, jealous rage. _Stiles?_ That’s who she chooses to rebound –

 _Rebound?_ They would have had to have been dating to _rebound._ He winces at the bitterness of the words.

“Ready?” Stiles’s voice comes through the speakers.

She offers up one thumb in response and the music starts again. Her eyes close and she doesn’t touch the microphone stand, but takes deep breaths. There is audio playing, a woman’s voice talking about something before a strangely, dreamy melody comes through, like something from a child’s music box.

Stiles hears his own sleepless nights in the track and remembers. He knows that Lydia  can hear it too and are barely keeping her own  emotional floodgates closed. He thinks she’ll do it, keep it in, keep her mask on even as the song pulls at every part of them both.

 _I long to be loved by you…_ the lilting recording sings. _I long to be loved by you…_

 She thinks of Aiden, she feels the music and hears Stiles’s emotions about Derek in the floating feeling of the song. And then there’s Lydia’s voice where he imagined it would be and he makes sure that he’s recording.

 “ _Blood on my sleeve, I give more than you need, Yes I do. To you, you…Bottle of red wine, for two… Frightened you creep, so I cry in my sleep Yes . I do… Yes I do. When the sun comes up, then I come down…”_

The sound of violins and the dropping of a bass marked the beginning of the next line and Aiden stares. He knew she could sing if only because she was in the vocal program, but he didn’t expect _this._ He always imagined her as more of an opera girl, a classical singer, but there’s too much sex and violence, too much sorrow and rapture in her voice to let her be classical. It’s as if she’s poured every piece of herself, polished and gritty melding together, into every word.

 “ _He always fucks me like a rock star… But I feel empty as a mini bar. And in the morning I’m hung over you…You’ll never say that you love me… No…You always turn over when we’re done…Why can’t you say that you love me? No. Two bodies under the midnight sun…_ ”

Aiden stifles a grunt of discomfort and turns to find the exit he’s looking for. He should have left while she was still getting ready. Now her voice would haunt him all night. Stiles watched Aiden skirt around the edge of the theater and disappear out the back and felt something like triumph.

 “ _And I’ll keep walking on broken glass for you…Two bodies under the midnight sun…._ ”

When the song is over and Lydia has resurfaced, she’s crying. Stiles leaves the booth to climb on stage and hug her as tight as he can. She sobs into his shoulder. His own eyes are burning because damnit, he’d arranged it for her, but it was so damn _true_ to him too.

“How are you doing this?” Lydia asked, her voice thick with tears against his shoulder. “How are you doing this?”

“Strength is nothing without courage…” he said. “I can only learn from the pain when it comes and try again… Sometimes the loneliest push everyone away.”

Lydia nodded understanding. He pulls back to kiss her temple and tells her that they’ll work with that recording for now until she’s ready to try again if they need to. She isn’t sure if she could do it again and follows him up to the booth to listen to the recording. It’s soulful and deep and Lydia can hear her own memories in every note of her voice.

“It’s a beautiful arrangement.”  
Stiles nodded and saved the recording to his computer, emailing a copy to Lydia , and got ready to go.

“Come on, let’s go eat frozen yogurt.”

Lydia laughed and nodded, better than ice cream.

*

Aiden arrives at the parking lot to see Derek waiting for him by the car talking with Erica. They climb into Derek’s Camaro as Aiden gets on his bike to follow them towards the diner. Aiden holds Derek back from entering as everyone else goes to get a table. When they’re alone, he starts talking.

“I think I’m out the alpha pack.”

Derek waits for an explanation as they stand outside, “What do you mean you’re out of the alpha-pack?”

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to do this anymore.”

He snorts, “You know we, us, the alpha pack isn’t really about the sex, Aiden… It’s about family. Sure it’s something we all joke about and do, just because you’re going to go and have yourself a functional relationship, doesn’t mean you’re no longer family.”

Aiden blinks, “What?’

“Dear god no, do you think I’d let Erica name us something that corny if that was the case?”

“Fair enough.”

Aiden suggests Stiles to take his place.

“He has potential.”

Derek feels his gut turn, because obviously he’s heard the rumors. While he isn’t sleeping with Stiles anymore, he kept tabs on him. He’d heard the rumors that he’d become a player in the game, a good one too. It had been gnawing on the back of his mind that he’d turned Stiles into that… the same way he’d been turned into the monster he was now. He only hoped that his words would push Stiles into healing and letting it go.

He had no idea who exactly he was dealing with, because that was exactly the opposite of what his words had done because Stiles drew up a crime board for the next phase in his plan. Derek was the kind of chess player that had on strategy, pawns forward, knights, rooks, bishops next, all crowded around the king and queen. He was defensive appearing as offensive and rigid in his ways that made it impossible to move.

Stiles was of a different mind. Lydia regarded his crime board with a smile, “Looks like you’re planning world domination.”

He grinned, “For you too.”

Lydia looked at him and he grinned, “I know you won’t ask, let me.”

She smiled, “I’m sure you factored that into your plan.”

“Always.”

Lydia nodded. She didn’t know what the answers would be, but she didn’t fight the fact that she wanted them. No strength left to think, no courage left to ask. Stiles, and his seemingly inexhaustible energy and strength, she envied him.

“You know,” Lydia said. “I wish I would have snatched you up when I had the chance sometimes.”

Stiles snorted, “They can barely handle us as friends. Us dating, Lyds? We’d destroy the world.”

“The balance?”

“The Force would never be with us.”

Lydia smiled and sat at the bar as he began making lunch. Her phone rang somewhere in between him dicing things and sautéing.

“Hello?”

It was Allison, begging advice and girl talk. Lydia put her on speaker with a smile.

“Hey Allison,” Stiles greeted. “Unfortunately, Lyds is over my place, you’re welcome to come over though.”

She thanked him and Lydia texted her the address. Lydia smiled.

“I bet this has to do with Isaac.”

He nodded, “Oh I’m sure.”

When Allison arrived, she looked about as put together as Stiles was on Saturday mornings. Lydia figured that she was having more turmoil over this than she thought.

“Staying for lunch?” Stiles asked and Allison nodded, taking a seat and talking. True to prediction it was Isaac.

Apparently, they’d been getting really close, but they hadn’t talked about dating or anything more than their friendship.

“And then I heard from Holly…”

Stiles winced at that. Holly Travis was one of Isaac’s more shameful trophies. She’d latched on to him after one night and was convinced that they belonged together until Isaac set her straight. Now her mission in life was to ruin his life.

“I would personally take everything that Holly said with a grain of salt,” Lydia said. “She’s bitter because Isaac only wanted her for a night.”

“And what happens if he only wants me for a night too?” Allison asked. “I really like him.”

“Then really like him,” Stiles suggested. “And don’t sleep with him until you’re sure it’ll be more than that. Asks for terms up front.”

Allison sighed, that of course was the easy answer, but she wasn’t into taking risks and asking for terms up front seemed to be scarier than just dancing around the topic indefinitely. Her father would flip shit if she ended up a one night stand and crying in his office. Even if Isaac turned out to be a total dick, he didn’t deserve that nightmare in his life. No one did.

At the same time, Lydia agreed with him and knowing how she and Aiden went when she didn’t ask for terms up front, or set rules… Braving the rejection seemed to be a better alternative than the heart ache Lydia was suffering now.  Stiles made some sort of pasta that was beyond amazing for lunch with enough left over for Scott when he got back and lunch for the next day. Allison stayed a while longer for company and advice before heading off to her father’s for afternoon Argent Bonding time.

“Do you guys go hunting after criminals or…?”

“We watch crime shows actually and laze around the house,” she said. “Thanks for the talk… and lunch. It was fantastic.”

Stiles grinned, “Any time. You know I’ll totally do recon for you too if you’re interested.”

Allison wrinkled her nose, “Maybe I’ll take you up on it.”

And then she was gone. Leaving  Lydia, Stiles, and Scott alone to do homework in relative peace.


	9. Pollute The Room With A Filthy Tongue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles pulls out the teeth. Erica and Isaac start to put pieces together. Danny is in a car accident. Ethan likes Danny. Jackson returns.

Three days pass since that encounter in his apartment before Derek sees Stiles again. The world seems quiet until Isaac tells him that apparently, Stiles’s reputation had gotten worse per the latest sorority party. Stiles is strutting down the hallway, his hair is mussed as if someone’s hands have been in it. He grins and stops to chat with lacrosse players, handing off a plastic container of food. He stops to talk to another group, pulled from his normal pathway to speak with plenty of people before reaching the culinary class at the very end of the hallway. He knows his uncle is supposed to be teaching a class today and wonders what Peter thinks of him.

The pack meets at the loft, later that night and Derek understands that he’s only made it worse as Stiles is tell them in vague, respectful terms about the paternal twins, a girls, that he’d been rolling around with a few nights prior. From another university, there to visit their sister at sorority.

“Sounds like you had fun,” Derek said, good-naturedly.

“And I have you to thank for that,” Stiles said with a smile. His eyes are burning, but his jaw is set. Derek’s eyes are burning but he doesn’t say anything. “A patented Derek move came in handy. I learned from the best.”

Derek is sure that he’s going to throw up, but too his credit his sits there and they stare each other down before Derek cracks a grin. _Hard ball, huh?_

“As long as you understand.”

Stiles’s grins spread its devious. _Hard ball indeed._

“You should bring a notebook this weekend,” Derek said. “We’re going to another school’s party. You know, an invite.”

“Sounds like it’ll be educational.”

And it is because Derek throws himself into having as much sex as he possibly can in one weekend. Stiles doesn’t seem to be interested in falling behind. Erica and Isaac share glances as the two of them resurface on Sunday, grinning into the sunlight.

Something was off about the whole thing.

Erica had been having a sick feeling since Stiles said he’d learned from the best. It had felt like a jab, but she couldn’t quite understood why it was a jab. Isaac had been having the same feeling and as the only one that actually lived with Derek, he could tell her that Derek hadn’t been sleeping well. His nightmares had come back with vengeance, practically every night. Sometimes it was of the fire, sometimes it was Kate, sometimes both.

The next Sunday came like a whirlwind between the obvious competition between the two.

“Where’s Stiles?” Derek asked curiously, counting the heads of his pack in his living room. Stiles was usually there by now and he was pretty sure that he and Erica had plans to go out before her date with Boyd, who Derek had yet to meet.

“Don’t know,” Erica said. “He didn’t say anything—”

Erica fished her phone out of her pocket and answered, “Yes, Batman?”

“ _Danny’s been in a car accident, I’ll catch up with you all later. I’m driving to the hospital right now.”_

“Of course honey, we can’t hang out with you worried to bits and pieces. We’ll see you when you can.”

She hangs up after a moment and announces that a “Danny” has been in an accident and is being taken to the hospital. Ethan stills.

“Danny? Danny who? Did he say?”

Erica shrugged, “Don’t really know.”

*

When Stiles arrives, Scott’s pacing the hospital floor, decked out in his EMT gear, blood on his face and he’s shaking, eyes flickering nervously.

“Scottie,” he said approaching him. “What happened? Is he okay?”

Scott shakes his head, “I don’t know, Stiles. There was so much… blood. Everywhere… I hardly recognized him…”

Danny had been t-boned on the passenger side at an intersection by a drunk asshole driving too damn fast. The car had flipped and crashed into a building. The inside of the car had looked like a murder mystery. Scott had been finishing up a false call in the area when the call came in and he raced to the place. Danny ‘s face had been splattered with blood, his car had definitelt seen better days…. But he’d recognized Scott’s voice.

_Scott? Danny asked as they pried the passenger door open to get to him. What…_

It had made Scott nearly throw up, because he hardly recognized Danny laying against the driver’s door, nearly unconscious and losing blood quickly. The other driver was in critical condition and they took Danny in for surgery a few minutes before Stiles arrived. Scott had done  his job, giving them information, precise urgent, and stood staring at the door to the operating room shaking.

Stiles bit his lip as Scott stopped talking and seemed to zone out into the memory, “Could you call his parents? I just… I can’t right now.”

“Yeah, Scottie. You did what you could. Sit down.”

Scott nods, shaking himself into a chair. He takes Danny’s cellphone from Scott’s hand and answers when it rings.

“Danny?”

“This is Danny’s phone. He’s been in an accident. Who is this?”

“Stiles? It’s Ethan. What hospital?”

Stiles blinks and gives him the name of the hospital and a synopsis of what he knows before he hangs up and starts calling the Mahealanis. They’re worried and terrified, but Stiles promises to call back as soon as they know something concrete, to keep them updated. They’re getting ready to drive up later that day and Stiles prays that there won’t be a funeral. Ethan arrives soon after, Lydia and Kira soon after and they all sit in the waiting room, completely unaware of each other and waiting.

“Mahealani?”

Stiles is up first to go to the nurse, Ethan is there with him. With a speed that’s telling and interesting to Stiles. Was the entire alpha pack attracted to his group of friends?

“They just brought him out of surgery. He’s stable, but very tired. He should make a full recovery with time.”

Stiles takes a deep breath as she goes on to tell them that he has broken an arm and has a bit of a concussion. He’s lost a lot of blood from the glass that had dug its way into him, cutting deep but not fatal, and where the bone brook through the skin.  The EMT that cared for him did a good job at staunching the bleeding and probably saved his life.

Stiles hoped Scott could hear the praise through the haze of adrenaline and fear.

“Can we see him?”

“Sure, but just for a few moments.”

She leads them down the hallway towards ICU. Danny’s awake answering someone’s questions and he smiles slowly seeing them enter the room.

“I hear Scott saved my life,” Danny rasps with a grin, squeezing Scott’s hand as Scott fumbles for the uninjured arm to make sure he’s still there. “Thanks.”

“What would we do without our dimples of sunshine?” Scott asks. Danny coughs a laugh and grins.

“Tell me someone called my mom…”

“I did,” Stiles assures. “And your Dad, and your grandmother and your sister. Everyone, promise. They know. I’m about to call them back and tell them you and your dimples are indestructible.”

Danny smiles and nods and then his eyes fall on Ethan who’s standing back but staring at him. Ethan offers him a smile and Stiles looks between the two of them before ushering everyone out with a knowing glance.

“Hey,” Danny starts. “How’d you…”

“Stiles was supposed to come hang out and he said a Danny was in the hospital. Lo and behold, it’s Stiles who picks up your phone when I called.”

Danny smiles, “Thanks for coming.”

Ethan nods and squeezes his hand gently, “I’ve got you covered for classes so uh, don’t worry about that. Just rest, alright?”

Danny nods and squeezes back, “Thanks Ethan. You don’t have to bargain for sweets anymore promise… I know how much you hate hospitals. It means a lot to me.”

Ethan swallowed and nodded slowly. He stays until the nurse tells him he can’t anymore, but promises to come back and visit. He does in fact to visit and bring him food, company, to fill him in on classes when he asks.  He’s there when he’s discharged, usually timing his visits around family and friends. When he comes to Danny’s apartment he’s a little surprised. One, he didn’t expect it to be so small, mostly because he didn’t expect Danny to live alone.

“I’ve found that living alone suits me because the hours of coding. I’m only here when I need to work… or heal I guess.”

Ethan smiles at him, “You alright? Need help?”

Danny groaned, sinking onto the couch with a sigh, “Please. If I get any more help, I’m going to feel like an invalid. Sit. I’m fine.”

Ethan sets his helmet down and sits beside him with a sigh beside him. Ethan isn’t sure what it is, but he can’t focus on what Danny’s saying, staring at his face and trying to grasp what he’s saying, but it’s like important white noise. He knows he’s responding appropriately, but all he can hear, feel, see is Danny there. Alive. Breathing and those damn dimples he’s been wanting to stick his tongue in for ages.

“You okay?” Danny asked. “You seem a bit out of it.”

Ethan nodded slowly, “Sorry… just… you know. Injured Danny, my brain isn’t fully operational.”

He smiles slowly and takes Ethan’s hand to squeeze gently. Ethan stares, drawn forward by some force that wouldn’t be denied and he touches Danny’s face. Alive, there, warm Danny.

“Ethan?”

It’s just a moment’s pause between staring and kissing him. His tongue sliding into Danny’s open mouth, drawing groans and needy whimpers. He’s careful about laying Danny back, not wanting to disturb his injuries. He keeps his weight off of the other, though looming over him and giving him no space to breathe as he marauds his warm, alive mouth with his own.

Danny groans. He’d forgotten what lips on his own felt like, the taste and warmth of another’s mouth on his. Ethan was spicy, edgy and so damn _good_. To think that in one kiss, Danny began to rethink his playboy policy. He didn’t remember ever liking being kissed that much, couldn’t remember being this turned on and needy since—

Danny pressed lightly against Ethan’s chest and the other pulled back immediately. Something that was at once telling and shocking. His eyes focused on Danny and breathing slowly, they flickered searching for injury, wrong or anything really, but Danny only panted and tried to clear his head.

“Danny?” He asked. “Did I hurt you?”

He shook his head and sat up slowly. Ethan, wrapped an arm around his waist to pull him up and lessen the strain.

“As nice as that was… I’m not going to sleep with you. This isn’t going to happen. I make it a rule not to try and date or sleep with playboys. It’s just too messy for me.”

Ethan blinked and stood up, stepping back from Danny swallowing. He turned and drew a hand across his head, shaking his head to clear it before offering a small smile.

“Sorry,” Ethan said. “I uh… shouldn’t have done that. Just… caught up in the whole you could have died deal. Won’t happen again, promise.”

Danny bit back the words _I want it to_ and smiled, shaking his head, “It’s okay, Ethan. You don’t have to  leave.”

Ethan shook his head, grabbing his helmet and holding it in front of him like a shield as Danny stood, “If I… mean to keep that promise, yes I do. I really do.”

Danny swallows the heat in Ethan’s eyes and it’s just a tiny step forward that lets him know that Ethan is serious, before he’d turning, saying his goodbye and rushing out of the apartment. Danny locks the door behind him and leans against it.

What the hell is wrong with him? It wasn’t as if he didn’t have the hots for Ethan, physically and emotionally. God damn baggage however and prudence suggested not to get involved with that again.  He’d been burned before and he wasn’t really interested in getting burned again. Wasn’t that why he friend-zoned Ethan so adamantly after he found out who he was? To protect himself… only to realize that Ethan more than just respected his boundaries but seemed hyper aware and vigilant of Danny’s wants and needs.

“Damn,” he cursed.

Why did he have to go for the playboy?

He didn’t get a chance to figure that question out because another knock came on his door. He sighed and turned around, preparing himself to face Ethan again only to see a very different dirty blonde on the other side of the door.

“ _Jackson?_ ”

He grinned, “Danny! Surprise!”

The other stepped forward to hug him gently, careful of the injuries. How he knew he was injured he didn’t know, how he knew where he was living, he didn’t know, but he did know that Jackson being in this city meant something…

“Jackson,” he said, hugging him back. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve been planning to come back for a while, I’m not coming back to the US until next semester, but I wanted to come visit. Your mom told me you were in an accident, so of course I came to see you first.”

“First?”

He nodded, “I was… going to talk to Lydia.”

Danny’s eyes widened. This would not end well.

*

Lydia woke up Monday morning, took a shower, brushed her teeth, and went to her closet. She didn’t hear her phone buzzing on the table, or anything else over the sound of her latest recording with Stiles.

_Going under… drowning in you…_

She decided on, thick lace tights, thigh length skirt, off the shoulder top and her ankle high boots that laced up. Lipstain, gloss, bag, and leather jacket, she headed downstairs to catch a ride with Scott and Kira to school. Stiles was supposed to be meeting her at one of the recording rooms later. She hopped out and walked the few steps towards the performing arts building before stopping in her tracks to see a familiar build and head of hair that she didn’t think she’d ever see again.

He turned slowly, impeccably dressed as always in a blazer that she remembered picking out for him over jeans in that cut she’d told him he looked good in. That smile that had stolen her sense once upon a time and now made all the memories roar to the surface.

“Lydia,” he said with a smile looking at her. “You look wonderful.”

“Jackson,” she greeted. “I’m surprised to see you… here… What are you doing here?”

“I’m transferring next semester… I came early to see Danny… and…”

She swallowed and heard the roar of jet planes in her ears. Don’t say it, she prayed. Don’t say it. I’m not strong enough for this.

“And you,” he said looking at her. “Can we talk?”

She felt herself stepping back into the shadows, veiled and without form, letting something else speak for her. That same voice she’d used the last time she spoke with Aiden.

“I have practice right now actually.”

“Could I come? I’ve always loved your voice.”

Lydia swallowed and shrugged, it shouldn’t make any difference to her. What he knew of her voice wasn’t what it was. He followed her and she refused to walk any faster or any slower until she reached practice room 3. The sound of Stiles playing the electric guitar, eyes closed and focused on a complicated flurry of notes greeted them. Jackson’s eyes widened seeing Stiles there until he looked up and stopped playing, looking between Lydia and Jackson as she dropped her bag in a chair and went to collect a pair of head phones. Mack, the grad student who’d agreed to run the audio booth for them nodded at her as she smiled and headed into the practice room where Stiles was.

He pulled off his headphones and stepped away from  the microphone to look at Lydia. She met his gaze and he nodded with understanding. She could handle this and he’d be right here if she thought for a second that she couldn’t. What Jackson knew of Lydia’s talents were classical songs, ballads. He’d never heard Lydia sing anything but ballads as her mother had been a stickler for classical music.

“Ready?”

Lydia nodded and breathed, sliding on her headphones and stepping to the microphone. Stiles stood nearby, the guitar in his hand. The drummer and the bassist there as well waiting through the verse as Stiles and Lydia harmonized, acapella an dclear.

_You’re the light. You’re the night. You’re the color of my blood. You’re the cure. You’re the pain. You’re the only thing I want to touch. Never knew that it could mean so much…_

Stiles began to play, growing momentum as he played and they sang.

 _“What are you waiting for~?”_ Lydia and Stiles belted out for a full eight counts before the drummer kicked up the beat and the band joined in, Stiles changing his chord progression.  As they moved into the chorus which was more than what Jackson expected.

He’d never seen Lydia sing like that all heart and soul, expression, eyes closed and belting out notes. Rocking with the sound of the music. Stiles and her voice mingling together a perfect harmony that seemed to spur each other’s passion on.

“I’ll let you set the pace—“

“Cause I’m not thinking straight…”

“ _My head spinning around I can’t see clear no more… What are you waiting for?”_

Lydia carried the note as Stiles faded into the chorus. She sang the high notes and runs over Stiles’s voice in the chorus. Somehow, it all came together with the accompaniment that even Jackson could feel it. Though the source of the emotions behind their singing, he couldn’t really fathom, but he watched entranced as the song ended and the man in the control booth with him gave them a thumbs up and pressed a button.

“Awesome, clear as a bell. Want to try the other now?”

Lydia nodded and he heard the beginning  of the a gong and then Stiles strumming harsh along with the drums.

_They fall in line_

_One at a time_

_Ready to play_

“I can’t see them anyway…”

Sitting to watch them play through this song was different. He’d never pegged Lydia for rock music, but he’d been gone for two years now. This Lydia wasn’t the one he left back in high school and Stiles sure as hell wasn’t the guy he used to put in lockers either. It was another song he’d never heard, but he could hear the aggression in it from both of them.

When they reached the verse, he’d been shocked if only because he didn’t think that Stiles could scream like that or that Lydia’s voice would sound so _vengeful_  as her voice and Stiles’s deep scream filled the space where the accompaniment once was.

_Don’t make me mad…_

_Blow me away!..._

When it picked back up he could tell they were winding down. They recorded three more songs, he assumed that they’d been practicing and this was just the final run.  When they were finished, Jackson wasn’t sure what to say watching Lydia exchange hugs and fist bumps with the band as they all packed up and got ready to leave.

Lydia and Stiles made sure to be clear that they were busy with things and maybe Lydia would be free some other time.

“Alright,” Jackson said easily. “I’m staying with Danny. I’d ask for your number, but that seems like a bit too personal for the years between us. Just… let me know.”

Lydia told him she would, checked her watch and informed Stiles that they’d be late if they didn’t get going. In truth, they had nowhere to go, but it was strategy that they’d perfected over the years. Lydia climbed into Stiles’s jeep and he drives away from campus. They don’t look back or say anything until they reach the park and walk to the benches by the lake. They sit there until Lydia is ready to go back.

Night has fallen by then and she still hadn’t checked her phone. If she had, she would have seen at least ten messages , voicemails, and missed calls from Danny telling her exactly what she’d found out the hard way.

Jackson is here.

Lydia, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know he was coming.

He wants to talk with you.

Don’t take the front entrance to the sound studio.

Catch a ride with Stiles if you can.

_Damn it._


	10. Watch Me Choke It Down (So I Can Throw It Up)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ethan's a great haggler... or maybe Danny is just lonely. Stiles has a soliloquy. Aiden hates Stiles. Lydia's in distress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Shakespeare meets Def Poetry and song and this chapter will be long.

This time it’s Ethan, Aiden, and Erica sitting on his couch when comes in. All silent, though Erica is twirling her hair on a finger and reading her book. She’s there more to keep them there. Derek welcomed the sight of them because thinking about their problems meant he wouldn’t have to think about his own or the fact that he hasn’t eaten all day for fear that he will in fact throw it up.

“Your pups are upset,” she said, closing her book. “I’m making hot chocolate.”

Derek nodded and took a seat, “What’s wrong you too?”

“I got rejected,” Ethan said.

“Same as the last,” Aiden replied.

“Rejected?” Derek asked. “And still torn up over  Lydia.”

They nodded.

“Rejected by who?”

Ethan told him about Danny and Derek began to wonder if Stiles’s friend group just secreted some kind of pheromone that attracted the members of his pack. He shakes his head partially too tired to deal, but not liking the alternative.

“Do you want to date him?”

“Yes,” Ethan choked.

“You want to date Lydia?”

Aiden’s throat worked and he nodded stiffly.

“Then take a breath and jump,” Derek said with a humorous smile. “And keep trying. Perseverance is key after all.”

Erica rolled her eyes, what a hypocrite. How could he tell them that and not follow that same line of reasoning with the mysterious triple major he’s been pining over for months?

“Is it… really that easy?”

“Erica?”

She threw up her hands, “Yes! Yes it is that easy!”

She gave Derek a pointed look, “I’m totally telling Peter about this.”

Derek groaned before Aiden and Ethan demanded details. Erica gave them freely and suddenly he was on the side of advice and the twins were telling him to  _take a breath and jump_.

“Plagarism,” Derek growled. “Thanks Erica.”

“If I knew who this guy was, I’d tell exactly how much of a pine-wolf you are.”

Aiden snorted, Erica had been spending way too much time with Stiles.

*

_Thump!_

“Ow!” Scott cried out, landing on his back once more. “Please… tell me we can stop.”

Kira chuckled and helped him up, kissing his cheek, “You can go sit down.”

“Thank god.”

She chuckled and turned back to watching Lydia and Stiles face off. He let the two of them go at it since they seemed to have the most to work out on the floor. Danny was there of course, still sporting his cast and keeping out of the way. Jackson was there watching as Stiles and Lydia went at it. This was another thing he didn’t expect given that Lydia had never shown any inclination towards self-defense or fighting and Stiles had never shown any inclination not to trip over himself.

“Looking good, Batman!”

All at once the mood changed as the alpha pack, in all work-out clothing rounded the corner. The twins were rough housing and Derek looked as threatening as ever. Aiden stopped mid noogie to watch Lydia and Stiles roll around on the mat, wrestling with Kira on the sidelines giving directions. If they weren’t clothed, he would have thought they were having sex with the way Stiles kneeled over her, arm around her neck and pulling. She wiggled out of his grip and flipped them over, sitting on his chest, knees in the crooks of his elbows, practically pin.

“One… two—“

Stiles lifted a leg to hook around Lydia’s chest and pulled from the hip until she rocked back and he could flip them over. They broke apart and fell back panting. “I’ll get you next time Lydia.”

“Not on your life,” she quipped as he sat up and looked over to the approaching group.

A moment passed before Erica bounced over, “Mind if we join you? Papa wolf says his cubs need to learn to defend themselves.”

Stiles snorted, “Is that so? Guess the alpha can’t be there at the right time every time if you can’t buy some time.”

Erica nodded sagely with a grin as Stiles rocked onto his feet and rolled his shoulders.  Aiden and Ethan take to the far side of the mat while Erica and Lydia paired up. Kira was still in the middle of trying to teach Scott about his center of balance, which left Derek and Stiles.

“Sure that’s fair?” Jackson snorted, “He’s a good deal bigger than you.”

Kira crossed her arms, “I’ve taught Stiles well.”

They faced each other, sizing each other up and it was Derek who moved first, coming in low to try and sweep Stiles’s feet from beneath him. Stiles jump and came down fast. They met blow for blow, though Derek didn’t strike with full force, that wasn’t the point after all and he didn’t want to injure Stiles. HE was fast, much faster than Derek was, using his size and speed to his advantage it was hard to keep up. He found himself grinning at the challenge though and thinking that this would be fun if playing for stakes.

 _Strip boxing,_ his mind supplied. _Strip wrestling._

Stiles threw him over a shoulder, but Derek, dragged him down with him and they were then grappling on the floor, for leverage and stability, but Stiles had him pinned, arm wrenched behind his back, knee pinning it to the center of his back and steady as Stiles kept his balance and weight centered so he couldn’t break free.

“One. Two. Three!”

Stiles rolled back, getting to his feet with a cheer, “Whoo! Suck it, Alpha. You are no match for the caped crusader!”

Erica laughed as Derek rolled to his feet, all animal grace and strength.

“You’re good.”

“I learn from the best.”

Kira beamed at the compliment as Stiles turns to grab his bag and chug water,  “I’ve got class to get to, so I’ll see you later.”

They waved him goodbye and it was Erica that asked, “He’s rather deadly isn’t he?”

Kira nodded, “He took to self-defense hardcore. Best pupil I had at the dojo back home.”

“How come?”

Scott winced, “High school wasn’t the best time for him. He needed something.”

Derek knew what that was like and though Stiles had never told him the story, he had a feeling that whatever happened to him had made him feel helpless. They stay with them for a while longer before they head to their own classes. Danny and Ethan are left as Jackson has to go meet his parents for something. Ethan takes Danny’s backpack and helps him on to his feet.  They walk towards the science building slowly and are about half way there where Ethan stops.

“Can we talk?” Ethan asked, turning towards him. Danny gives him his attention and waits.

“One date,” Ethan starts. “Anywhere you want, anything and if you think I’m a total lost cause, then you’ll never have to speak to me again.”

Danny moved to speak but Ethan shook his head, taking his uninjured hand, “No gimmicks, no games… just us. You know?”

Danny knew and how, that didn’t mean he would let it happen. He’d been keeping Ethan at arm’s distance for a reason, comfortably blocked in the friend zone. He liked Ethan and he wasn’t sure if he’d had the resolve to protect himself first when they met. Old wounds were still too raw, but now…

“I really like you Danny. I don’t want my reputation to be the thing that keeps me from having you. I’m willing to work for it, to prove myself if you’d let me.”

Danny bit his lip and watched Ethan’s eyes, they were open, scared, but so damned determined that Danny sighed, shaking his head.

“I’m going to regret this, I know I am.”

“You won’t,” Ethan promised. “You won’t.”

Derek nodded slowly, “I hope you’re right.”

Ethan grinned, lacing their fingers together and leading them to class. Danny couldn’t help but feel a tad warm. Holding hands had never been something he’d been able to do before. He wondered what else may come with Ethan’s bargain.

*

The next Monday, Stiles went to his professor’s office to tell her that he was changing his performance.

She seemed surprised, “It’s a little late to do so. Why would you change it now?”

He’d never had an problems with public performances before.

“I… found something better.”

She shrugged, “Get me the draft by the end of the week.”

He pulled out three sheets of paper and handed them over. Intrigued, she took them from him and leaned back in her chair, reading it and nodding slowly.

“It’s… it’s good,” she said. “But I don’t want you to perform this in class.”

He frowned and looked at her. The project was a deal: perform a piece that was already written somewhere public and have it recorded, or draft your own and perform in class. Stiles hadn’t thought of that part of the project when he’d wanted to change it, but apparently she had.

“Well then… where?”

“Somewhere that will inform this piece,” she said handing it back to him. “You don’t have to, but I think it would add dimension to your piece. Think of it as extra credit.”

With that he left without even telling her where he had in mind. The video was due would be due next week after all so they could watch them during the last weeks of classes and have enough time to write reflection essays . He would have Lydia record it and direct him a bit. He was sure there would be at least three takes, but he would have it done. He’d do it in the coffee shop after dinner. It was fitting and painful.  Due to time conflicts, it turned out to be closer to midnight, around the time when he’d first met Derek, in the same place about the same hour.

Lydia met him there with Scott and Danny to record as well. He breathed deeply and rolled up his sleeves, he was sure that he didn’t have to even pretend that he was somewhere in between mourning, grief, and rage, he looked the part. Scott and Danny moved the tables back, leaving one table as he’d planned before setting up the tripods. When they were all set up, Scott gave the go ahead.

“Whenever you’re ready.”

Stiles swallowed, taking a seat at the only table left in the area and staring out the window, dredging memories up. He’d wished that he didn’t have to. The words had felt too personal when he’d put them together, but now that he would say them the felt too personal to bear. He should have just stuck with the pre-written, but then it wouldn’t be real. He should have just said he would perform it in class. But he was an artist at heart and he agreed. This character he’d made of himself deserved a proper stage and what better stage than the beginning? If anything, he wanted this to be real, he always wanted his art to be real. If he didn’t think it possible to make this harder than it would be already, the world turned on its axis and dropped Derek Hale and Erica Reyes on the path towards the coffee shop.

His eyes burned and he swallowed, setting his voice right so that the microphone attached to him would  pick it up his voice. He thinks of the arch of the speech, not the worlds, but the feelings, story he’s telling, his grievances and rage and he _feels_ it come from him.

“ _If,”_ he said. “Only… this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew. Made of words and moments too too intimate to be fantasy, yet as weighted as whispers of nights past. If only the everlasting had fixed his canon not against self-slaughter and all manner of self-harm—but suffering. Must I remember? Heaven and Earth and the everlasting. O, God! If only I could turn the gears of my own canon to sleep, a peaceful repose. For in those eyes, in that sleep of trance what dreams may come as they shank us deeply and hold us merely, what pain may come after those kind words and gentle caresses—what _misery_ is wrought from the pangs of despised love that exists not in a dreamless sleep. Must I _remember_?”

Derek swallows and Erica drags him around the barrista station to sit and watch even as Derek wants more than anything to escape because he isn’t sure where the divide between Stiles and his persona is when he looks so _shattered._ But it’s his words that hurt the most, because it wasn’t too long ago he was thinking of Stiles performing on of Hamlet’s soliloquys, of saying those lines. Now taken from history and made present, from fiction to fact, his words drew attention. Why was it so full today? Had there been an announcement or was it required by classes? How had Erica known to come now? Was she here to support Stiles? Had he invited her? Had she done this knowing what it would do to Derek to see him like this?

“Could I not merely scrub it from my mind and cut myself free from the bitter taste of what could have been? What I thought should be? All the fantasy and desires molded into a mirror to show the truth of myself and dash it to the ground? To be a free agent, perchance to merely dream—the problem, the curse and frustration of this life with the impossible shield we know as flesh and free will and the eyes that say nothing and all at once drown us in reflections of that which we want but cannot have!”

Stiles shakes his head, standing, wrapped in his own mind, the words flowing too fast to be anything but real. Lydia’s read the script at least a dozen times, he’s not following it any longer, and that scares her.

“Let me not think on it. Fie on it! Ah fie! A curse on all houses—” his hands card nervously through his hair and he paces, nervous stuttering steps. “For if I had common sense, I’d cut myself or curl up and die. For who would bear it and further it, spurn it to action, when they themselves might their quietus make with a bare bodkin?”

He shakes his head and grips his fist, “For I have been Sisyphus at the top and bottom, under rock and boulder. I have been in hell and waters that scream at me. I have been to the edge, just one more--took too much--not enough-- _shaking_ on the bathroom floor. To darkness and chaos and the everlasting unknown from which no traveller returns. To numb, to end; no more to sleep; and by a sleep to say an end the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to—to sleep, tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. To numb, to end—to empty… To nothing… I have been…”

His voice trembles and quakes, his shoulder slump slowly. Stiles breathes, closing his eyes against the burning and watching memories flicker. His father’s dying face, the feel of warm hands sliding over his skin, marking him. That voice that called him by his mother’s name.

“I have been…brave,” he chokes out. “For all that is necessary is to be courageous, as surely, strength without self-confidence is empty. I have been to Hercules as Helios is the sun. I have been Odysseus in hydra’s lair. I have been a hero of might and victim of depth. I have been brave—yet still it was not enough…No scientist nor biology, no manner of reading could have prepared me-- nor turmoil nor strife  nor death could have hardened me for this…”

The coffee shop is officially paying attention now because _wow_ they didn’t know the theater program was so _good._ How was he making himself cry like that, the cracking of his voice, his movements all of sorrow… Scott wanted to punch them all, to wrap Stiles up in a blanket and hide him from the world so at the very least this pain wouldn’t be made into a spectacle, but he couldn’t. He held the camera steady on the tripod and kept the view on Stiles completely. This was really all he could do.

“All heart in arms that want for cream with chocolate and burn my skin—fever pitched. The eyes I dare not meet, but make me see and expose the deepest of myself and fall apart. The heart that knows you as more than your face and black hair, and eyes like shifting water and sand. The same heart that is filled to the brim with you won’t beat again without you, if you aren’t in my veins— I’m sure you know. You’ve held me, hurt me so good, so pained, so _free_ I fly and float between here and nowhere, out of my mind and beyond this form that’s marked for days – owned… taken… yours. Marks that fade from flesh but not mind or heart—stopped, world is over upside down and under—ruined, wrecked, destroyed and crushed me held, and opened for me, encapsulate and enthrall me, rule me, school me and never falter to ask _are you okay?_ ”

Derek swallowed, closing his eyes and hearing his own voice, asking Stiles if he was okay, to hold on, to look at him, to just _touch_ him.

 _“_ So tenderly, so _fuck,” Stiles groaned._ “When did the silence start? When did you leave? How long have I imagine that smell of you and me, mingled, muddled, fused inseparable as we felt then, there. Here and now. Empty as a mini bar, walking on broken glass, poisoned with this thing called lover and melting, thawing, resolving into a face I don’t recognize in the mirror.

Fucked me like a rock star, fingerprint—marked and owned—on display. Beyond repair, be still my fluttering heart.-- I don’t want to care like I want to care. Shaking hands that see no stillness, edge of everything and no end, hell without fire, square boulders that do not move and screeching night terrors the unholy offspring of pleasure and death itself.”

When Stiles pauses, the coffee shop is oddly quiet. There’s a thick, emotional silence hanging in the air and then he’s kicks a chair and flips a table over.

“You’re a goddamn liar!”

He knows that voice and it makes his stomach twist because it’s wet and thick, trembling. It’s angry and wounded, lashing out. Stiles has whirled, not facing him, but glaring at the ground as if it had personally been responsible for Stiles’s current emotional state.

“Can you hear me? I’m crying out. I’m ready now.” Stiles glaring into Lydia’s camera. His voice edged with rage, his body shaking, his eyes are reddened and flashing bright streaks are over his flushed cheeks. He’s crying.

“ _Here_ in this unweeded garden that grows to seed; the weary, stale, flat and unprofitable all things rank and gross in nature…In it, conscious does make a coward of you. All for you. You who would bear this hollowed empty feeling that rises and crushes with all the slings and arrows of fortune, the whips and scorn of time, the calamity of so long life… this feeling that marks the passage of time in scars on your heart  rather than fly to something you know not of, yet crave and writhe and beg with eyes so open I see to the very heart of you.

“If I knew the name of the villain, I would rend the hair from their heads, limbs for their bodies, and paint my walls with their blood—bash their heads on the steps though they be faultless to me—on your behalf, yet you will give me no reason more… no thought more… no word more than this.

“You pollute the room with a filthy tongue. Do anything, but this…Watch me choke it down so I can throw it up. If I spilled my guts, blood on my sleeve I’ll give more than you need. Anything, but this…”

He shakes his head, squaring his shoulders and nods, “As you’ve said it let it be so. Let it be that we are the empty that writhe and grapple and turn over to ignore their own forms of bone and blood and heart and spirit.

“We are predators with no hunger, no need, and no slumber because to be still is to be not, to be and not to be the question and answer to the sea of troubles. Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer against a sea of doubts and by opposing end them or to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune?  Failure find me to tie me up and choke me out. Failure find me and hang me up by this rope I’ve cut and bent to form to hang myself.

What a spineless, brainless, gutless, senseless fool! A beast, that wants discourse of reason has more sense than I, unburdened with heart and the potential towards self-harm. The play, the play’s the thing I will catch the conscience—this is what it takes to fake a smile and say vixi…To fly, to fly towards fire from a safe place, to chase phantoms and questions and hell,  and plans. O, most wicked speed, to post with such dexterity to Machiavellian plot.”

He chuckled, dark and grinned all fang and cunning, a grand gesture with a sweep of his hand, “After all… one does not simply _walk_ into Mordor… and get out alive.”

“And how is it that your unmovable nature should meet with my unstoppable force and test the very core of being,” he said with a wry tilt of his head, pacing, thoughtfully now. “The very essence of everything that we are for some wrong that is neither mine nor your, neither real nor imagined, neither begun nor ended—but trapped in the hollow nexus of pain because it’s better than nothing at all?

“How then is it that we instead play. We dance, we schmooze and glide along to this twisted game, one square at a time, pawns in front, nobility at our sides—a stalemate than resolve. How now has it come to this?

“I find that sorrow only bring out my best and the bottom is not as low as it gets and yet and still with knowledge I fly to ills that I know not of rather than bide my time with the pains that have been given to me.

“Who would grunt and sweat under such a weary life, such a burden as love, but that the dread of something worse than pain, the horrendous country from whose bourn no traveler returns easy—that of numb resolution to be as empty as stuffed men leaning together? That the shape without form, shade without color, paralyzed force and gesture without motion be the tomb of I who can neither conquer nor submit in Limbo.”

He laughs again, stomping to the edge of the small circle, his eyes directed to nowhere as he shakes his head and laugh, it’s maniacal and crazy. It’s bitter and broken to Derek’s ears. _Fuck,_  how was Stiles just exposing himself like this? The idea made him cringe and get dizzy.

“Oh, what a knave and fool am I to toss myself upon this board for answers that will not come from lips sealed shut with the thread of despair! What a wretched fool doomed by his own hand. Yet this plot of self-destruction will not turn awry, no, no no. On all tears of sleep from this body, on the midnight sun that rides the night sky like a whore and keeps me awake, on the sweet lips of you, I swear to rend the words from your lips.

“For it to come to this… How fast must the bond of fear and despair hold? How tight is the noose on your neck that threatens every step, every breath, every word so you would block me from your sight rather than be tempted to speak at all? How tight a hold must this phantom have over you? I cannot know until you speak. I will not know until you answer and we… will never be _free_ until you tell me.” 

“If you’re ready,” Stiles taunted. “Better keep steady… ready aim shoot. For this is how you need it and I’m going to give it to you—one bullet at a time. I gonna teach you a lesson in the worst kind of way. _I swear on my untimely grave._ ”

“By your leave,” he said with a bitter laugh as he leans against the window where the rain as splattered it and the sound of the rain is strongest. It’s cold and bracing, his eyes drift towards the falling rain and the flash of lightning through the sky. He thinks of the rainstorm that night he was in Derek’s apartment, hoping that it would end there.

His legs are giving out, the tears are streaming and he feels everything coming undone as he slides against the window to the ground, the weight of the realization, his words, and everything he’s done, giving him pause. Derek chokes on the words as Stiles is halted by the floor and doesn’t move.

It’s too much.

 “A medicated… drama king, pitch perfect numb belligerence and an anarchistic, drama king, painted perfect with mindless decadence…the stage is set. For this is the way to answers; this is the way to understanding. This is the way to resolution—not with a scream but with a whimper.”

A few moments pass as the three manning the tripods turn record Stiles sitting still and the sound of silence and the rain. Stiles waits to hear the beeping of the three cameras that the recording is over before turning his head and grinning.

“How was that?’ He asked.

Lydia goes to him, kneels on the floor and hugs him tightly. Scott swallows and walks over as does the Danny. He can hear Stiles laughing. It’s hollow like he hasn’t refilled himself with emotion after pouring it all out into the performance.

“You think she’ll like it?”

“If she doesn’t, I’ll kick her in the shins,” she says and he laughs again. A few more moments pass and they right the tables, picking them back up. He’s still flushed, wiping his face with his sleeve and walking towards the barrista.

“Hot stuff, Batman! What’s that for?”

Stiles turns and looks at Erica, then to Derek before sniffling. He meets his eyes though Derek can’t meet his.

“Performing Arts Class,” he answered as Derek set his cup down. His stomach twisting as a warning.

Erica nodded and Stiles gets pulled along to the barrista for the tall order of hot chocolate that Scott is ordering on his behalf. Extra hazelnut and chocolate syrup, whipped cream and marshmallows. He laughs.

“Geez, it’s a soliloquy not a love letter.”

But he’s lying and Derek knows he is, because there’s too much coincidence between them and the words. Stiles knows he’s lying, they know he’s lying, but they don’t comment on it, only guides him out of the coffee shop and away from the small swarm that has descended to talk to him. Stiles plays it off flirts even, talks art and theater with several people before taking his leave and following Danny to the media lab to get the footage from the cameras.

He goes home with Scott and retires to his room to get started on video editing. It’s about an hour in before Scott comes in to his room to hug him and not comment on the fact that Stiles can’t stop crying and hasn’t worked on putting the video together at all.

“You can do it tomorrow,” Scott told him. “Just breathe right now. You were amazing.”

Stiles shakes and nods. He takes comfort in Scott’s presence if only for the night because he was returning to war the next day.

“It’s Derek,” Stiles says gently.

Scott groaned, he’d actually sort of liked Derek and he was pretty sure that the man could kick his ass with ease.

“I’ll get Kira to kick his ass.”

Stiles laughed, a real one and spent the rest of the night, curled up to his best friend, rebuilding his shields to face the next day’s war.

In the end, he slept so long that he was late taking his meds. Stiles carried his laptop and all the footage with him to his classes and agreed to study hall at Derek’s apartment with the pack. Derek wasn’t there, out on a business meeting with his business partner and uncle. Stiles was more sure that Derek had escaped his own apartment rather than be trapped anywhere near Stiles. It made him grin with triumph a little bit, but made his stomach clench. He’d taken the man’s steady ground. It was a bit of a dick move, but the art of the war never mentioned anything about playing fair and everything about always taking the upper hand when you could. He’d brought his emergency Lydia bag with him and was currently leaning against his backpack. He sat on the floor with his legs stretched out while Erica lounged on the couch behind him, occasionally peaking over his shoulder.

“What with the tote bag full of food?” Erica asked.

“It’s a cooler too. I’m going to hang out with Lydia later, spending the night at her place.”

It’s nonchalant, but he feels the tenseness in the air. Aiden sits up from his place on the other side of the couch. Erica regrets bringing it up.

“What?”

“I’m going to go hang with Lydia,” he repeated, still typing. “She’s had a pretty tough week.  A really rough week between her ex showing up and finals. I’m going over for her benefit.”

That had been an understatement really. Jackson, while not doing anything untoward, had been persistent. Lydia had gone out to lunch with him nearly every day since he’d been there, she’d been treated well but the memories and the habits that were encroaching on her now had been driving her nuts. She’d called Stiles to meet her at her apartment at nine because that’s when Danny would be dropping her off.

He thanked every god in the cosmos that Danny was driving her and not Jackson. Being alone in a car with Jackson, would be the last thing she needed right now.

Erica giggled, “Yeah, because she wouldn’t count as a score.”

“I don’t need her to,” Stiles said.

“Ooh, confident,” Erica said ruffling his hair. “Careful, Batman, you may make more enemies.”

Stiles snorted, “Enemies are easy to come by.”

He gets through most of the video’s audio, up until he kicks the chair and turns over the table, before thanking them for the hospitality and heading for the door. Again, Aiden follows him but doesn’t stop at the elevator. He’s there even as Stiles is putting his stuff in the back seat of the jeep.

“Don’t touch her,” Aiden said. “I swear to god Stilinski, I will _end_ you.”

Stiles being the asshole he is and not in the mood for Aiden’s threats when he wouldn’t have to make the threat if the other would just man the fuck up. But he guessed that Derek was the alpha for the reason, they all, except for maybe Ethan and Erica, followed in his footsteps.

“What are you going to do if I do? I thought you were done with her, so this has nothing to do with you. From what she told me, you didn’t want her as anything more than a consistent hook up.”

“She was never just a hook up,” Aiden growled. “And if you talk about her that way again, I’ll make good on my promise.”

Stiles rolled his eyes, getting himself free of Aiden’s grip, “You can tell me that all you want, but if she doesn’t know it, it does you no good.”

Aiden frowned as Stiles climbed into his jeep, “My advice to you is to tell the truth for once in your life.”

He revs the engine and pulls out of the parking spot. He hasn’t fully disappeared down the street when Aiden dials Lydia’s number and prays that she hadn’t deleted it, forgot it, blocked—

_You’ve reached Lydia Martin, I’m sorry I can’t come to the phone right now. Leave me a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible._

He doesn’t leave a message.

*

On the way to Lydia’s apartment, he prays that Aiden took his advice, called her, and that she doesn’t answer. The bastard would deserve to squirm. He parks in front of Lydia’s building and carries his bags up the stairs to knock on her door. When she opens it, he prays that Aiden suffers the pains of groveling for the rest of his life.

“I’ll find someone to murder them both,” Stiles said as she wipes her face and lets him in. He drops his bookbag by the door and the snack bag in the middle of the living room before taking a seat.

She’s distraught.

“I can’t think,” she started, fiddling with the hem of her oversized sweat-shirt that’s ratty and soft with multiple washes. “I can’t do my homework.”

“You can’t—“

“I can’t focus, Stiles! I can’t do anything. I’m just…”

Another knock sounds on the door. Stiles opens it and thanks the universe for Kira, Scott and Danny who looks a little worse for wear as well. Apparently, he’s not the only one with relationship troubles.

Kira announces that she brought ice cream, because frozen yogurt just wouldn’t cut it for this. Scott ordered pizza and everyone is on their third slice before they talk about the reason why Lydia is in distress.

“Danny, can’t you tell him to stop?” Scott asked around a mouth full of pizza. “Can’t you see how stressed she is?”

“Lydia asked me to stay out of it,” Danny said. “Besides, it’s not like Jackson really listens to me.”

Stiles nodded, it was a fair point and Lydia shook her head. It wasn’t Jackson, or even Jackson’s decision to try and rekindle the flame—it was his timing and Aiden and the fact that she couldn’t find her other spike heeled combat boot. Combined with her mother calling her upset because she’d heard that she wasn’t singing any ballads for her finals and her father was calling that once a month “I want to buy your affection” call, Lydia was emotionally overloaded. Something that pizza, ice cream, action movies and friends could ease but not end.

Something had to give, but for now they leaned together and passed ice cream around. Danny told them that he was dating Ethan and while he hadn’t show any inclination of being a complete asshole, he couldn’t convince himself to fully trust him. Knowing what they knew of Danny’s dating experience, they could understand.

“If he’s worth it, he’ll wait,” Kira said firmly and Stiles only smiled.

“Ethan’s wrapped around your finger,” Stiles informed him. Danny blushed and his jaw dropped. “He’s asked me for insider information to plan your dates for a while now and you should have seen him the day you agreed to date him…”

Ethan hadn’t stopped grinning, beaming, Erica had almost called it sickening. And then there were questions, when was the pack going to get to meet him, how are things going, and of course _Stiles help me._

“He’ll wait,” Stiles told him genuinely. “And celebrate every small victory.”

Danny nodded before they turned to Lydia, the reason for their gathering.

“Better?” Kira asked.

 “I just… keep thinking about who he could be fucking now… How good it is… does he even care? And then there’s Jackson.”

“I don’t think he’s fucking anybody,” Stiles said. “And as for Jackson, he’s going to have to work a whole lot harder than a few lunches to even be worthy of acquaintance after all the shit he pulled.”

Lydia snorted, Aiden was a predator. She’d known that, she’d seen him in action at least once before before they started sleeping together. Why she thought she’d be--

“I don’t know what you did Lyds… but uh that one’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“Left his seat, how’d you think I got it?”

“Really?”

“Well, in that part of the alpha pack, apparently it’s more like family less about the sex. The sex is a side thing… I’ve been being a good friend and getting inside information if you want it.”

“I see.”

“Yep, he threatened me twice not to touch you.”

Lydia’s winced, “Ew.”

“Yeah, ew. Packmates don’t share.”

“Stiles,” she groaned, shoving at him.

“I wouldn’t worry about it. I can promise you that he’s hurting a regretting as much as you’re hurting…. So make him grovel.”

Lydia smiles and repeats the words, “Make him grovel.”

Stiles nods as she tilts her head and looks at him form the corner of her eyes, “He thinks you’re boning me huh?”

“Raunchy stuff, burning his insides I’m sure.”

Lydia grinned. If it was eating him up now, she had plans to make his insides liquid. Stiles grinned.

“There’s my Black Widow.”

 


	11. I Built This House Just To Burn It Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek is still jealous and that inspires raunchy, angry make out session. Stiles is sexy when he threatens. Aiden and Lydia finally get a resolution. Derek gets another Peter lecture and Stiles considers giving up. Isaac and Allison are officially dating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter will probably be long... and still no beta.

The rave they’d been invited to was loud. Loud enough that it would have given Derek a headache if he wasn’t so determined not to let the noise bother him. In loud places it was easier to skate around the formalities of introductions. Ask someone to dance, chat them up a bit- easy. What wasn’t east was seeing Stiles there chatting with a girl dressed for the rave, pressed up against one another. She laughed and he looked down, smothering the rage.  He moves through the crowd, but his mind is looking back at Stiles and the girl, making out on the neon painted steps.

Who is she? Why does she exist and why the hell is still here?

He turns back to find Stiles and the girl gone and his eyes burn, his chest aches and it takes everything in him not to scream. It’s about an hour or two when Stiles reappears, the girl appears later and he’s been pushed and shoved in every possible way.

“Hey dude, you okay?”

The idiot in all black at a rave, looking more out of place than Derek felt, asked beneath his fucked up motorcycle helmet. Derek did his best, but all at once, his body was moving and the need to destroy something was just too great.

There was noise, but the music didn’t stop, the clattering of a table to floor as Derek flipped it over onto the ground. Oddly satisfied that he was ruining someone’s day beside his own.

Stiles stared from across the room, but Derek didn’t meet his eyes, walking through the crowd and towards the exit. If he stayed any longer, he was going to do something incredibly stupid,  or at least even more stupid than flipping over that table.

He doesn’t see Stiles until the next night while he’s avoiding being alone with his thoughts with a healthy, or not so healthy, run on the treadmill.  He runs like a maniac until he can admit that it isn’t helping and heads towards the locker room for a shower. Stiles is there, rummaging around in a locker and he can’t help himself.

“Why are you doing this?”

Stiles tenses at the question and breathes. He wasn’t expecting Derek to

“What do you want?”

“What do you mean? I want answers… I want you. You can’t tell me that all those months you were just playing to get laid. I can’t be that much of a trophy: skinny, defenseless, virgin Stiles…”

Derek hears his voice telling Stiles that he was the best trophy that he could ever hope to get and if he could just keep him forever he would, but he doesn’t say that. It’s mushy and completely against the rules.

“You want me to say that you’re more of a trophy now? Is that it?”

“No,” Stiles sighed, too tired to put a real fight. There was no point in shields right now, at this hour and at this stage in the game, there was no half-truths to tell. There never had been any.

“Then what?”

“Were you not listening?”

“I don’t do relationships.”

Stiles rolled his eyes, not this speech again, “Dude what’s your damage?”

“Don’t call me—”

“We talk over night at three in the morning, you answer when I call and have nightmares for months, you know things about me my best friend doesn’t know and I’ve known him since diapers, dude. You do all these extremely intimate boyfriend things and then you want to make into a trophy? How do you expect me to figure that shit out?”

“There’s nothing to figure ou—“

 “Fuck that,” Stiles cuts him off. “Big bad alpha doesn’t do relationships. Big bad, heartless alpha,…you really need a new script. This one’s getting old if you’re going to keep up this little charade. What the fuck did you call that shit? Cause it looked like jealousy to me--”

“I don’t get _jealous,_ ” He sneers. “You’re a trophy, a win, nothing more.”

“What’d you flip the table over for? You just felt like it? What they hell are you from _New Jersey_?”

Derek glares at him and turns heading towards the shower stalls and Stiles follows him not letting up on his rant.

“No one kisses someone like that, touches someone like that and they don’t want them. No one fucks someone like that when they don’t want them or whenit’s just a score. No one does that.”

“What makes you so sure?”

Stiles rushed a head of him, cutting him off before entering the shower stall, still fully dressed.

“Because I don’t have to ask to know that I am the only man to fuck you.  And I’m the only man you’ve ever fucked. I could tell you point blank that you were my first, but you knew that already. In every way, my first everything actually…”

Derek swallows and thinks about pushing Stiles aside, but he’s frozen by those brown eyes on him.

“Alright, you don’t want me?”

“No.”

“You don’t want me even a little bit?”

“No.”

“If I stripped naked and bent over against this wall, on the floor, on the locker room bench, right now… you wouldn’t fuck me?”

Derek grunts, closes his eyes against the image of fucking Stiles until he couldn’t say anything but _Derek Derek Derek_ and bites out, “No.”

Stiles can respect his tenacity at least, “You don’t get jealous over someone that you don’t want, Derek.”

“Who said I was jealous of anything?”

“You flipped over a table… And Derek, you’re not a violent person, but apparently violently jealous.”

“You don’t know anything Stiles.”

“I know—“

Derek marched forward then, slamming him against the wall his hand around his throat, but not tight enough to bruise or put pressure, just enough to shut him up. The motion sensors caught them and cast a wall of water over their heads, warm and only partially distracting.

“ _You know nothing,_ ” he glared.

“Jesus, Derek,” he said, breathlessly. “I know it was good. It was better than good.”

“I’m a good lay,” Derek said wryly. “It’s the one thing I can do right.”

“I meant us,” Stiles said shaking his head, pushing through the pain of those words. He placed a hand on Derek’s, gently, soothing the bitter and pained edge to his words. “And yes, it was also the best night of my life, but it wasn’t because you were just a good lay, Derek. It was the best night of my life because someone I was in love with wanted, needed me, me enough to have sex with me.”

Derek’s throat worked and he stared at Stiles, whose eyes grew soft and beseeching. His hand and those wicked fingers moving to cup Derek’s cheek so tenderly a whimper escaped him.  Stiles thought he was touch starved, but Derek was definitely seconds away from begging for more of that touch that meant something. What had been done to him? Said to him to make him like this?

“You let me in as deep as I let you in,” Stiles breathed. “I know I wasn’t the only one who felt so damn exposed--”

Derek can’t hear another word of it because his mouth is on Stiles’s. Stiles’s hips twitch and he groans. Hands move and before either of them realize it,  Derek’s hand were on him and Stiles’s hands were in his hair, tugging, carding through the water-slick strands as Derek pressed his hips into Stiles. His tongue shoving so deep into his mouth, he can taste every moan before it starts. Fucking his mouth with intention and Stiles presses back , shaking, taking it and demanding more.

“ _Derek,_ ” Stiles breathed, tilting his head back so Derek could have better access to his throat.

Shaking hands, tugging at Stiles’s clothes. His shirt came off along with Derek’s in between kisses too short on breath. Reverent hands skimmed over skin, memorizing every dip, remembering the sweet spots and drawing a deep red flush to the surface. Derek lifted him up and pinned him against the wall with hip wishing to god that he could think enough to figure out why he wasn’t skin to skin with Stiles yet. Stiles’s legs were around his waist and the most sinful noises were coming from his mouth, swallowed down and drawn out. He swears that he’s going to come before Derek can even get his hands on him.

“ _Derek, please…_ ” he breathed groaning as Derek’s hands fumbled to the soaked waistband of Stiles’s work out shorts, tugging at them to get them off, but only succeeding in getting Stiles’s cock free and in his hand. Then his own and them both pressed together and slick in Derek’s hand.

Stiles wrapped his own hand around Derek, licking into his mouth with a needy sound and rolling his hips into Derek’s grip. Derek grunts at the spikes of pleasure that drive up into his skull and make him mindless. He kisses Stiles like he wants to brand his insides with _Derek Derek Derek_.

“Want you,” Stiles breathed. “Need you. _Missed you so much…_ ”

“Need you,” Derek breathed. “Fuck, _Stiles_.”

“Yes, yes, yes—ruin me,” Stiles groaned. “Then let me ruin you.”

“Fuck, _yes,_ ” Derek groans on a breath, his hips twitching forward and grinding against Stiles.

“Wreck me.”

“Fuck me.”

Impatient and needy, too damn lust-stoned to realize that if he stopped for a second he could slid into Stiles and work them both towards Stiles’s plea. His heart is going to explode in his chest the way it’s pounding, he’s so hard and so turned on that he can’t see straight, the taste of them together and sex so close. Naked, now, in him, on him, together— _now,_ _now, now_.

“ _Love me, Derek._ ”

Why wasn’t he—

The warm hand vanished and Derek pushed his legs off . Stiles cried out as he crashed to the wet floor beneath the spray. As he tried to regain his sense of sight and realize that Derek had left him on the very edge, trembling, shaking, his eyes rolling back.

“D-Derek?”

“We can’t do this,” his voice is less convinced than his words are. He stumbled back, his legs quaking so much that he has to hold himself up and shut his eyes. His cock is flushed red, leaking precome and twitching.

Stiles knows he’s in pain the way he scrunches his face with discomfort… It’s the face Derek made when Stiles had kept teasing him, barely brushing against his prostate when Derek was so close. He hadn’t done it on purpose, he’d been nervous fumbling and Derek had seemed to like it. Now, Derek was doing it on purpose and he definitely wasn’t liking it.

What a fucking masochist.

“Why? “

“No seconds.”

Stiles’s jaw drops and he shakes himself onto his knees and slowly begins to stand. “No seconds? Really dude?”

“I don’t sleep with people twice.”

“Really?” Stiles said. “That’s what this is about? You don’t want to sleep with me again? Was it not good?”

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“It has everything to do with it.”

“This isn’t right, I have rules. This isn’t happening.”

Stiles confused, “What? You’re giving me emotional whiplash here, buddy. You can’t just kiss me like that—“

“I can do whatever the fuck I want.”

“Yeah, so long as your actions don’t encroach on my rights and I think brining me to very edge and then freaking out is definitely against some hand job code when it’s obvious that you want it.”

“I don’t do relationships. I don’t want you like that… Actually, I don’t want you at all. I’ve already had you.”

“You don’t think you want me?”

“No, I don’t. I know I don’t want you.”

“You’re a goddamn liar,” Stiles tells him. “And I’m going to make your life a living hell.”

“What is that look for?” Derek asked looking at him as Stiles straightened himself up and grabbed his shirt, pulling his short up and tucking his cock back into his underwear, now soaked and uncomfortable. His expression is smirking and seductive, coy and charming and so arresting that Derek has to remind himself to breathe.

“Stick to your lie, Derek for as long as you can,” he said advised. A devilish gleam in his eye, “but I’m going to prove to you that you want me in all the ways that matter: in your bed fucking, in your car sucking you off, over your desk begging, by your side, holding your hand, in your mind, Derek.”

Derek steps back and again Stiles steps forward, sure footed even as Derek thinks his legs are going to give out as Stiles stalks him towards the half wall of the showers.

“I’m going to make the thought of breaking every one of your damn rules more important than breathing. I’m going to fuck you--mind, heart and soul if that’s what it takes for you to admit that you really want me in all the ways it fucking matters. In every way you think, I’m going to make you know that you want me.”

“We’re going to make it a game. If you can manage not to admit it, I’ll let it go. That’ll be all the answers I need. But when you do admit it, do know that I win and winner takes it all. Understand?”

“I don’t need to play a game with you Stiles. It’s not going to happen.”

Stiles laughs low and breathy, bending down and sliding his hand into Derek’s hair. He opens his mouth and scratches lightly while breathing along his neck until Derek squirms. He lets go with a pleased sound and steps around Derek, letting his hand glide over Derek’s still erect dick and collecting a drop of precum on his finger tip. Derek watches, pupils blown, mouth open, face flushed as Stiles licks from the base to the tip of his finger and moans obscenely. Drawing his kiss-bruised bottom lip between his teeth and letting it slide, spit and cum slick, to glisten in the florescent light.

Derek’s frozen and isn’t sure how he’s not coming right then, or maybe the haze is him coming mentally, or physically. He doesn’t know anything but the fact that Stiles is looking at him like he’s going to fuck Derek raw for days. When Stiles steps around him and exits the shower stalls, he hears himself cry out and fall to the ground.  Stiles doesn’t turn around of acknowledge what happened, but gets his things out of his locker and strolls out into the night.

Derek is left on his knees with the startling realization that he came hard enough that he couldn’t hold himself up and he can’t get up now.  And the reason he came was Stiles’s barely audible “Vidi, Vici, Venit” as he left. The shower has stopped and the tile has begun to cool, but his head is feverish, his body is still shaking like Stiles had worked him over for hours.

 _Fuck_ , what the hell had he gotten himself into?

Stiles let the door close behind him and made quick steps towards his jeep, soaked, her grabbed a few towels and lay them out across his seats before climbing in and driving to his apartment. When he entered, no one stirred and he went straight to his room, into the shower and gripped himself hard. Fuck, he didn’t know he could do that. He didn’t realize that Derek would get so turned on! It was a miracle that he’d made it back to his apartment with his shorts rubbing against his cock the whole way.

“ _Fuck,_ ” he breathed into the hot spray, bracing himself against the wall as he came, wishing that it was Derek stroking him or fucking him.

What the hell ever was holding Derek up, it didn’t have that tight of a hold on him. He could see it in Derek’s eyes overpowering the fear. It was pure _need_ , touch and affection starved Derek, brimming to the surface. He could have pushed him tonight, but Stiles didn’t want to break him. He wanted Derek to break his own rules damn it. The questions of course was why wouldn’t he since it was obvious that he wanted to rip his clothes of and fuck or ride Stiles into oblivion. What the hell were so important about this rules?

More questions meant he needed more answers and he’d officially begun to play his trump card, throw his curve ball. He only hoped that Derek would come to his sense soon before they both lost their minds.

Derek spends the next day vigilant as shit as if he’s waiting for Stiles to push him into a closet it and blow him or something. That doesn’t happen to his relief and disappointment.  Instead, there are whispers about Stiles being seen with guys about potential hook ups and rumored ones. He sits in his human sexuality class refusing to look at Stiles, but finding himself glancing at the smirk on the other’s lips whenever Derek watches him bite the end of a pencil. Stiles’s eyes aren’t looking at him, but they smile at the edge and Derek knows Stiles is aware of what he’s doing.

 _The bastard_. It gets insane when Stiles is eating a popsicle, along with everyone else, in class one day, except for Derek who just can’t seem to breathe Stiles’s is red, making the red of his lips even redder. He isn’t obscene so much as covertly distracting. When it melts too fast as Stiles sucks, apparently, absent-mindedly as the red drip on his hand, Derek wants to punch him in the face for being a devious little shit.

In retaliation, Derek devotes himself to fucking as many women as possible as hard as possible, even if that means thinking of Stiles while he’s doing it. He can’t tell if it’s affecting Stiles when the pack gathers on Sunday to talk about their lives, because Stiles usually has something in his mouth: a straw a pen, the ends of his glasses, a _blow pop_.

Jesus help them both.

To make matters worse, Aiden was working himself into a fit over Lydia. Lydia, per Stiles’s direction, has taken to continuing to dress the part of hell in high heels. She flirts with guys, Jackson included, she’s on everyone’s lips as a femme fatale and trouble with a capital “ _Fuck_ ”. Stiles only grins, spinning her around in the hallways and escorting her around. Aiden’s about three seconds away from murdering Stiles and hanging himself when Lydia gives him the shortest replies possible.

_Who is this?_

_When are you picking up your things?_

_I’m busy._

It’s been a long enough day that he just wants to sit down cry, but Stiles told him to meet him at the theater. He arrives and takes the stairs up to the sound booth, the back way, to see him there, manning the controls. Lydia is on stage in a black wrap dress and heels. She’s being recorded as a young woman begins to play. The song is familiar.

_Next time, I’ll be braver_

_I’ll be my own savior_

_When the thunder calls for me…_

_Next time, I’ll be braver_

_I’ll be my own savior_

_Standing on my own two feet…_

It’s not the same sadness as the last time he heard her sing. It’s anger and passio and all the things that Aiden wants to tell her if she would just pick up the phone. Stiles turns to look at him earning a glare.

“If you break her heart again,” he started. “I will find someone bigger than you to kick your ass.”

Confusing to say the least, but Stiles is getting up then and the song is coming to an end.

“Awesome, Lyds,” he said into the microphone. “I’ll leave the record on the computer. Sound good?”

She nodded from the stage and turned to the woman who got up and got ready to leave. Stiles tells her he’ll see her later, he’s running to his training in the culinary building. Aiden sat down and waited, watching her grab her things and strut up the theater’s rows and scrambles for something to say when she comes in.

“Aiden…” She whispers and he stands, biting his lip. “What are you doing here?”

“I… I need to… I lied, Lydia.”

She frowned as he stepped forward, “I lied to you and myself and I’m sorry.”

Lydia curls her fist inward and waits for him to speak, taking hesitant steps closer as she closes the door behind her.

“You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me, your wit and humor, that brain that leaves me spinning. I just… couldn’t… wouldn’t admit it because you scare me Lydia. I’ve never wanted to have a claim on anyone, never wanted to hold someone as much as I want to hold you, never wanted someone to have a claim on me either the way I want you to. It took everything in me not to punch every man who looked at you in the face and it burned that I didn’t have the right to. It burns me that it’s all my fault and I’ve hurt the only person who’s wanted me for something more than a good time.”

Lydia refuses to move, hearing the words and letting them sink in as he pulls something from his pocket and places it in her hand, holding her hostage.

“I haven’t had sex with anyone since you, I haven’t be able to concentrate on anything since that night on the stairs. I’ve just been thinking about who’s holding you when your mother calls, who’s telling you that you’re amazing when you feel like your father’s afterthought. I kept thinking who’s spending late nights with you, holding you, waking up with you and why the fuck isn’t it me?”

Lydia doesn’t have to look down to know what was in her hand,. She knew the feel of it and how light it felt without the solidness of the key it was meant for.

“I love you, Lydia Martin,” Aiden said. “All the physics in your head, all the proofs on your pages, love you.”

He pulled another thing out of his pocket and Lydia does gasp at it. It’s a key chain with two silver keys dangling on the end. The “L” is a protractor in shiny silver, a calculator serves as the background with the numbers for pi on the screen.

“We were Lydia,” he said. “We were even before you asked. I just wasn’t ready to admit it.”

The key and chain glisten in the light, resting in his hand, an offer to her, “Could we be now?”

Lydia swallows, closing her fist over the key chain and letting out a shuddering breath, “I was… going to make you grovel, damn it.”

Aiden grinned and went on his knees, arms around her waist, head on her stomach, “I will if you want me to… everyday if that’s what it takes.”

Lydia shakes her head and sinks to kiss him, arms around his neck and sighing softly against his lips.

“You owe me.”

“I pay my debts,” Aiden said. “With compound interest.”

“Ooh, what’s my APR?”

“At least 50 percent.”

Lydia giggled, and bumps noses with him, “Nerd.”

“I have to be, my girlfriend is a math goddess.”

Laughter leaves her before she can stop it and she yelps as he lifts her from the ground and kisses her again. A real smile on his face even as his lips are stained with her red lipstick. Taking the keychain from his hand, she gives him a wry smile.

“So… when do I get to see this mystical apartment of yours?”

Aiden grinned, “Whenever you like. I’ll even make you dinner.”

She smiled, “Oooh, really groveling there aren’t you?”

“Hands and knees.”

“Do I get to peg you?”

Aiden laughed then, his head back, “I’m willing to try anything once.”

Lydia nodded, “You’re on the right track.”

And that was all he wanted to hear.

*

“So, you’re the woman that’s been turning Aiden into a lovesick moron,” Erica greeted at the door. “Thank god he’s pulled his head out of his ass.”

Lydia laughed even as Aiden growled at Erica, “Lydia this is Erica. _Annoyance_ this is my girlfriend, Lydia.”

“How good did it feel to say that?” Erica teased and he growled at her in response.

She stuck her tongue out and let them in to Derek’s apartment. Ethan looked up from where he and Stiles were sitting on the floor.

“Hey! Look it’s the girlfriend!” Ethan laughed. “All we’re missing is the mysterious Boyd, Isaac’s girl and we’ll be all set!”

Stiles pushed pause with a grin, “He groveled properly?”

Lydia shrugged, “He’s getting there.”

And Aiden’s jaw dropped as Stiles stood up and offered him his hand, “I’m Stiles, the closest thing Lydia has to a brother. I’ll find a way to murder you if you fuck up. It’s nice to meet you.”

“You…” Aiden growled. “You were playing me all this time?”

“Of course, had to know where your head was,” Stiles said with a machivellian grin as they shook hands. “I can’t give my Black Widow to just anyone.”

Aiden couldn’t help but be floored, but now that his head was clear, everything made sense. Their closeness, their comradery--Stiles was never a threat, but he could be competition for Lydia’s time. It wasn’t anything more than friendship. They have dinner that Stiles makes. It’s steak and normal sides without his usual flair, but all the flavor they could stand.

When Derek tasted it, it was like being punched back in time to that night in Stiles’s loft apartment. It was the exact same.

“Hot damn,” Erica moaned. “If I wasn’t happy, I’d drag you to my apartment and do very dirty things to you Batman. Where’d you learn to cook like this?”

Stiles laughed, “My Mom actually.”

Derek knew that the recipe was one they’d come up with together. He looked at Stiles who was getting up to pull out the cake he’d brought. Set in the refrigerator to make the icing just firm enough without affecting the moistness of the cake.

 _Fuck_ , Derek groaned. He ate and it was just as good as he remembered, all that was missing was—

“Messy eater aren’t you batman?” Erica asked as Stiles sucked the chocolate icing off his fingers. It was normal, but to his eyes obscene, because he’d sucked icing off those fingers. His hand twitched, his mouth watered half frozen by Stiles’s display and then he realized that he wasn’t doing anything in particular.

_I’m going to fuck you—mind, heart and soul._

The little bastard.

It turned more vicious after that night. The rumors of Stiles’s scores and Derek’s dominating gossip channels, yet neither of them crossed the line of gender. There were plenty of rumors of Stiles doing so, but when asked, Stiles only snorted.

“Too busy, maybe next weekend.”

While Stiles slept soundly occasionally, Derek found himself without sleep more and more frequently, until he was up with Peter, a week after finals were over, discussing business plans on the older man’s couch and taking notes that Peter asked.

“You still haven’t fixed it, have you?”

Derek forced out a breath, “Can we not—”

Peter got up and went to the kitchen, pulling out a sauce pot. He isn’t sure what he was doing, but when Peter’s hands closed his laptop and took it from him, he didn’t have the energy to fight.

“The spare room is made up,” Peter said, offering him a steaming mug. “Drink and go to sleep.”

Derek nodded pitifully, taking the mug and shuffling towards the spare room.

“I don’t want to see you until tomorrow afternoon and I’m holding your laptop and phone ransom.”

Derek didn’t argue, but closed the door behind him, shuffling to the bed and taking a sip and shaking. Hot chocolate with a certain flair, too familiar not make his chest burn. Hot chocolate had been something his mother made for him, but it didn’t taste like this. This wasn’t quite Stiles’s hot chocolate, but a close second. He’d have to remember to ask Stiles what was in it or where he bought it. The similarity made it a bitter memory on his taste buds as he curled up in bed, beneath the blanket, tears streaming and empty sobs racking him.

He can’t remember ever crying like that, until he felt nothing and lay in a dreamless sleep. Empty and cold.

“ _Stiles,_ ” he breathed, clenching his hand on the empty pillow on the other side of the bed.

Stiles lay awake that same night, on his computer, writing down the night mare he had that was still swirling around in his brain. His therapist suggested writing them down as a way to get him off his brain. They never really helped, but it gave him something to do and allowed him to confront his own nightmares.

He wished more than anything that there was someone to talk. He would have called Derek months ago, or Scott, but there was no sense if waking Scott and he was sure that Derek wouldn’t have picked up the phone in either case.

 _I don’t think it’s working,_ he typed, wandering away from the horror of the dream.

He snorted at that and closed his laptop before heading into the kitchen. Peter had given him an assignment, to modify a recipe for his restaurant, comment on it. He turned on the voice recorder he’d been given to document his processes and began to pull out all the pots necessary according to the directions he’d been given.

It wasn’t sleep and it wasn’t calming, but it was something to do that he could enjoy.

“ _A little less wine in the skillet_ ,” he noted. “Just a splash of white into the sauce. Also I marinated the fillet in herbs …”

When someone knocked on the door the next morning, Stiles hadn’t been asleep. The apartment smelled like food. He opened it to see Aiden and Lydia on the other side.

“Here to kidnap—what’s that smell?”

“Breakfast if you’d like it.”

Lydia nodded and kissed his cheek as he let them into the apartment. He told them to help themselves before heading to clean himself up and get ready for the day. It wasn’t rest, it wasn’t planning, but it was a welcome distraction from trying to decide whether he’d had the answers he needed, or if he was just delusional to think that Derek actually wanted him as much as he thought he did.

“You alright?” Lydia asked him.

Stiles nodded, “Just… questioning my life choices.”

Lydia hummed, “You did this with the intention to end it, not for the long haul. You can end it whenever you want.”

While true, it wasn’t comforting. If he ended it now, he’d be forced to realize that he’d been delusional to think that he’d meant anything to Derek ever… Forced to really mourn that night when all he wanted to do was celebrate it and have it for the rest of his life.

“I don’t want to mourn anything else,” Stiles said thickly.

“But you don’t heal if you don’t mourn,” Aiden said wryly. “You don’t really get any closure without it either. It sucks, but it’s the truth.”

He heard nothing else after that but the pounding of his heart, the shortness of his breath and though _damn_ , wasn’t that what this was all about?


	12. I’m the King of Broken Hearts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny and Ethan finally have sex. Derek and Stiles share a moment on Christmas Eve. Peter is a sneaky bastard and Derek finally caves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: MalexMale Sexy times, Long chapter, Feels

The next knock on the apartment door was insistent and days after the first. Knowing that Scott and Kira were gone to visit Melissa and the Yukimuras for the holidays, Stiles got up and shuffled to the door, it wasn’t exactly early, but earlier than he usually got up on a Saturday with no one around to drag him from bed and without his nightmares to keep him up.  He wasn’t expecting it to be Danny on the other side.

“Danny?” Stiles asked, rubbing his eyes and letting the other in. “What’s wrong, you look like you haven’t slept.”

“I’m avoiding my apartment,” Danny said. “Lydia thinks I’m crazy.”

“You are,” Lydia said coming behind him. “Tell me there’s coffee.”

Stiles smiled, “Nespresso if you’d like.”

“Thank you, angel,” Lydia said shuffling towards the kitchen as Danny sat on the couch, rocking, holding his phone in his hand.

“What’s wrong?’ Stiles asked, walking to the kitchen to rescue his Nespresso machine from Lydia’s tired machinations.

“Thank you,” she breathed and returned to the couch, curling up on the other side of the couch. “You are god like.”

Stiles snorted and thanked her for the elevation before setting the cup in the machine and pulling out a mug. Cream, sugar, a splash of Baileys, and his own chocolate syrup it was perfect for her tastes. He placed the mug in her hands and smiled as she let out a pleasant sigh. He sat down beside Danny.

“What’s up, Danny?”

“It’s… It’s Ethan.”

“Should I grab my bat?”

Danny shook his head, “No… I… we made out.”

Stiles waited.

“He uh… got me off.”

Stiles waited a second before taking Danny’s hand, “Was it the bad touch?”

Lydia snickered as Danny shoved him, “Not funny.”

“What’s the problem?”

“ _Matt called me_.” Danny said. “He showed up last night.”

Stiles tensed, “How the fuck did he get your number? How does he know where you are?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I freaked out on Ethan this morning and now… I’m not sure what to do.”

“Has he called?”

“Yeah,” Danny said. “I just haven’t picked up. I ran out of my own apartment…”

Stiles’s jaw dropped and shook his head getting up to grab his keys before picking up his phone. Of course it was Ethan calling him. Stressed and a little panicked, worried and regretful—the poor guy.

“No, just stay there, I’m bringing him back. If anyone named Matt shows up, punch him in the throat.”

He hung up before Ethan could get an explanation and dragged Danny out of the apartment. Lydia was asleep on the couch before he got up.  After covering her with a blanket, he locked the door and pulled Danny to the jeep.

“Stiles I—“

“You have to tell him, Danny.” Stiles said. “Or I will. You can’t just run out like that though, he’s probably thinking he’s fucked up royally.”

Danny bit his lip, “What if I can’t?”

“Then you can’t and he’ll deal.”

“No such thing as compromise—”

“Sex is equal terms or not at all.”

Danny couldn’t help but smile at his words. Stiles always sounded like that, intense and serious about even the smallest thing. When it came to matters of intimacy though, Stiles was a heavy advocate for consent and everyone enjoying what was happening. Danny never figured out if it was something his parents stressed to him or something that Stiles came up with his own given his group of friends. Stiles opened the door and sat Danny down in Ethan’s lap.

“Danny has a psycho ex,” Stiles said. “He also wants to have sex with you. I’ll let him fill out the rest.”

He turned then and left. Danny did everything he could to get out of Ethan’s lap, but the other wasn’t having it, instead he spun him around to straddle his hips. Ethan watched his lap.

“I didn’t mean to pressure you,” Ethan said. “I thought—“

“It was perfect,” Danny soothed. “It wasn’t you.”

Ethan waited, “Just tell me what not to do.”

“I want you,” Danny told him. “I do.”

“But…” Ethan supplied.

“I have… issues.”

Ethan waited and Danny sighed curling up against him before telling him about Matt, his ex that had practically destroyed him. He was more than just unfaithful but a playboy and self-entitled prick who’d done everything short of full on rape throughout the course of their relationship. He’d let him for a myriad of reasons. He’d pressured Danny into a bunch of things that Danny wasn’t exactly proud of, but the last time, the reason why Matt was expelled and sent to another school was something different.

“He wasn’t exactly nice about it,” Danny told him. “He degraded and humiliated me. Made me feel helpless, possessed, controlled… but worth nothing. I was just a consistent lay for him and he treated me like that…I just… ”

“I triggered you,” he said gently, pulling Danny closer. “I’m sorry. I just want you to feel safe with me. I want to make you feel good.”

Danny nodded, “I know.”

Ethan breathed deeply; at least it wasn’t a total disaster. He rocks him gently and kisses his head as Danny told him about what happened the last time he saw Matt.

“He hit me.” Ethan froze and Danny squeezed his hand, “The scars on my chest…”

Ethan’s hand squeezed tighter, “He _beat_ you.”

“At school,” Danny said. “In the bathroom… slammed me into a toilet and broke a rib. He put me on my knees and…fucked my mouth. Punched me some more for crying.”

Ethan’s hand shook, pulling Danny closer, stroking his hair. His eyes were shut against the memory, but the feeling of Matt’s fist on his face, how helpless he’d felt as Matt pulled at his clothes and threw him down. The way he screamed even as Matt covered his mouth… Matt was so much bigger, mentally, physically, Danny had made himself so small, curling up just to escape the barrage of blows, the abuse if he could. It hadn’t helped.

His parents were out of town more often than not leaving his sister and himself in the house alone while they were gone. While not the worst elder sister, she didn’t seem interested in prying or finding out what was happening with her little brother.

“Scott found me in the bathroom after school…I was unconscious…”

Danny bit his lip and tried to keep from trembling as he said nothing.  Scott had been tender and pissed off, administering the first aid checks and calling the ambulance while coaxing Danny to stay conscious. He’d been training to be an EMT for the longest and using everything he’d learned to make sure Danny was comfortable and felt safe, cared for. Stiles had been the one to catch Matt unawares and get one lucky punch before he left school, subduing him until the police arrived. It had been after the funeral and Stiles was still in that phase where he needed to protect everyone. Danny should have listened to him and he never stopped listening to him since Stiles had shown up in his hospital room apologizing for not protecting him… that there wasn’t more he could do.

“Thank you for telling me Danny,” Ethan whispered, kissing his forehead. “You are so damn brave and I’m so honored that you trust me.”

Danny let out a wet sound, turning his face into his shoulder, “He… he showed up at my apartment, last night.”

Ethan started, like he’d been shocked, and growled, “What?”

“He was outside… Waiting for me, but… I got in before… And then he called and I… That’s why I freaked out. I’m sorry.”

Ethan shook his head, “Don’t be sorry. You have nothing to be sorry about. Get up.”

Danny whimpered looking at him with confusion before Ethan told him that he should pack a bag and whatever else he’d need for a few days.

“You’re coming to stay with me.” Danny blinked, still frozen, “I’m not leaving you in this apartment so he can break in and attack you. Guys like that don’t stop, trust me on that. Come on.”

Danny isn’t sure how he managed to pack a bag, but he’s sure it’s because Ethan is guiding him through the motions. When he’s packed, he puts Danny on the back of his bike and drives off.

“What about my car?” Danny asked.

“We’ll see if it’s safe.”

Danny frowned and asked him what he meant.

“If he found your apartment, your phone number, he’s been keeping tabs on you somehow. He’s probably got connections. Putting a tracker or something like that on your car probably wouldn’t be hard.”

Danny bit his lip, Matt had said something about his father being in the FBI… he’d met Scott’s Dad before.

“ _Oh god,_ ” Danny breathed.

Ethan placed a hand on his and squeezes for comfort before turning a corner and riding to the end of the street. The row of townhouses are nice, bordering on opulent. They pull into the garage at the very end and the door closes quickly behind them.

“Come on,” Ethan said gently, guiding him towards the door, keying in the code and ushering him inside.

The floor is tiled and the décor is fantastic. Ethan closes the door behind him and guides him further into the townhome. The bottom floor is an office and a coat closet. The stairs lead up to the kitchen and other rooms.  The kitchen is full of dark wood and black and silver appliances, all brand new and gleaming.

 “Who the hell are you?”

Ethan laughed, “Mom owned a lot of things. She split everything in half between us including the houses and all the other properties.”

“You’re fucking rich aren’t you?”

Ethan snorted, “Well-off. Come on. I’ll show you the way.”

“Where are you going to be?”

Ethan gesture to the last set of the stairs, “Up there. Want to see?”

Danny nodded, curious about Ethan’s living spaces. It seemed normal after the time Ethan spent at his apartment. Ethan hit the light leading up the stairs. There was no door, just a doorway. A large bed dominated the corner just out of the way of the window.  The bed matched the dressed and night stand. A large TV mounted on the wall and a door lead to the bathroom.

“Where’s your closet?”

“On the other side of the bathroom,” He said, watching Danny look around. He was still nervous, on edge, but seemed to be relaxing.

At the very least, distracted from the terror of his past haunting him.

“By the way,” Danny said, setting his bag down by Ethan’s bed. “I do feel safe with you.”

Ethan grinned at that, “Good.”

“Could I stay with you?” Danny asked, “I don’t… usually sleep well after…”

Ethan crossed the room to him and took his hands, “Breathe.”

He took a deep breath before Ethan leaned down to kiss him. Danny whimpered as Ethan eased his fingertips over his neck, then his hand, holding him still but not tight enough that Danny couldn’t get away. He didn’t want to, stepping closer and enjoying Ethan’s heat up against him.

“Better,” Ethan said, pulling back and pressing a kiss between his eyebrows. “Hungry?”

Danny nodded.

“Awesome,” he said and led him down the stairs to the kitchen. Settling him at the bar, Ethan set to work looking through his refrigerator.

“Aiden doesn’t live with you?”

“He lives next door,” Ethan said easily. “We have keys to each other’s places, but we decided two houses, one fence was the best way to remain brothers and not enemies.”

Danny grinned, he and his sister were like that. A few days at a time maximum of living under the same roof before they drove each other crazy, just long enough for them to get through the holidays. They’d gotten better since high school, but not by much. Matt had been a major catalyst for that.

“Are you going to Hawaii for Christmas?” Ethan asked. Danny shook his head.

“No, but I’ll be there for New Years.” Ethan nodded, “What about you? I thought you had an uncle.”

Ethan snorted, “We don’t ever go visit him. He always comes to us. One plane ticket instead of two and it’s a perfect excuse to run away from his job for a while. When he’s here we stay in the same house.”

Danny grinned and watched Ethan make dinner, it wasn’t like watching Stiles who was practically impossible to follow because he moved so fast. Ethan moved around the kitchen like someone who was used to being alone while he cooked. It didn’t matter if it was all done at the same time or not, so much that it all got done.

They were having pasta and breadsticks, nothing fancy, but they were comfortable as the talked and ate.  Ethan refused his offer to wash dishes and sent him upstairs to shower. He obeys and climbs into Ethan’s bed finding it far larger than his own. He wonders how many men have—

“None,” Ethan tells him from the entryway. The question must have been on his face.

He flushed, “Mind reader.”

Ethan grinned and came over to kiss his forehead before heading to the bathroom to shower. Danny heard the sound of hot water, feeling a tad odd to be in Ethan’s bed and not his own. As strange as he felt, he didn’t regret it. Strange was better than frightful and restless. Ethan came out dragging a towel across his head, half naked and Danny’s eyes trailed along the scar from his left hip to just under his left pectoral.

“It’s not pretty,” Ethan said. “But it’s never bothered me… just reminds me that I could have not been here.”

Danny nodded as Ethan tossed his towel on top of the rack and crawled onto bed with a grin. Danny’s fingers trembled tracing the slightly lighter streak with his eyes.

“Love you,” Ethan whispered into his hair, before falling forward and effectively knocking Danny back on the bed. He was warm and damp from the shower, but comfortable.

Danny laughed, “You’re a cuddler.”

“Only with you,” he said, kissing the exposed skin of his collar. “You like it.”

Danny nodded, “I do.”

Ethan grinned, “Good enough reason to be cuddly, now get comfortable.”

He would never tell Ethan that he was more than comfortable, but slid his hand into Ethan’s damp hair and dozing off with Ethan’s head over his heart, listening to it slow into a sleeping rhythm.

In the morning, Ethan’s phone buzzes with a notification. It’s a text from Erica, a mass text to the pack, of Isaac and Allison kissing outside a restaurant.

_Why do you have this picture?_

Another picture, one of Erica and a broad shouldered man, his teeth bright against his dark skin, holding Erica in his lap. They’re sitting in a booth and in the corner of the booth, Isaac’s face mid laugh. 

_I have the best luck._

Ethan shook his head, he was sure that was lie. Danny groaned, turning onto his side when he was able. He curled up on his side but his brow wouldn’t relax until Ethan slipped an arm around his waist. HE watches Danny sleep for a little while returning Erica’s texts. He sits the phone back on his night stand before turning to curl up and spoon Danny comfortably.

It started off as a slight wiggle. Ethan did his best not to be bothered, but it didn’t take long before his dick was sufficiently aroused by Danny’s restlessness.

“Danny?”

“ _Ethan_ ,” he breathed in a way that went straight to his deck.

Danny was dreaming about him. Part of him wanted to know what he was dreaming of, but given the situation, he didn’t want the other to wake up and freak out, so he pulled back.

“ _Ethan,_ ” he practically sobbed, gripping his arm tightly. “ _Ethan…_ ”

Ethan swallowed and turned Danny over, earning a groan and a twitch of Danny’s hips, “Danny? Wake up, Danny.”

He turned his head and Ethan watched fascinated by the flush growing over his cheeks, spilling down his neck.

“Danny,” he choked, shaking him gently. “Danny.”

His eyes opened slowly focusing on Ethan who was flushed and doing his best not to pay attention to Danny’s hard on or his own.

“Ethan?” Danny asked. “What’s…”

“You were dreaming.”

Danny frowned and froze for just a second before the flush roared and filled his cheeks. He felt hot and hazy. His boxers were tight though they were the loosest pair he own and he felt sensitive. _Dreaming_ , he thought wryly. More like fantasizing like a damn high schooler. He hadn’t had a wet drew in _years_.

“Sorry.”

Ethan shook his head, “No need to be. It’s nice to know you think of me that way. Are you going to be okay?”

Danny nodded and shifted to cover up his obvious hard on but Ethan stopped him, “I would. You know that don’t you? If you wanted me to.”

Danny swallowed and stared at Ethan as some impossible thing, “Are you… afraid to ask me?”

“Something like that.”

“Try telling me.”

Danny bit his lip, but the words came the way Ethan thought they would, “Touch me.”

Ethan grinned, sliding a hand over Danny’s thigh, up towards the edge of his boxers and pushing them until his hip was exposed and one leg was bunched around his hip. Walking his fingers up, he slid his hand beneath the hem of Danny’s shirt. Over his abs, across his ribs and up towards his nipples. Ethan had been with plenty of guys, but none so responsive as Danny.

“ _More…”_ He breathed. Ethan was content to do that, sliding his hand over Danny’s skin, watching him quake, watching him flush and writhe like Ethan’s hands were coated in electricity.

“ _Ethan, please…_ ”

“Tell me.”

“Touch me,” He said. “Kiss me.”

Ethan could tell this was going to be fun. Especially if it was just his hands that made him needy. He found quickly that Danny liked tongue and kisses and he was especially excited by affection. Ethan made sure to give him plenty of all of it.

 _Love you,_ he said against his skin, licking a hot line down his chest.

 _So gorgeous,_ he praised as the flush continued to wash over Danny’s body, following every touch of his hand and tongue.

 _I’ll take good care of you,_ he promised teasing Danny’s nipples with his teeth and tongue.

_I’m going to make love to you, Danny, but only when you want me to._

“Now,” he said, shaking.

His hair a mess, his body flushed and all but naked from the way Ethan has bunched his clothes up. Ethan hadn’t even gotten his dick out of his boxers yet, leaving it straining against the seam to hard it would probably break and that stain would never come out.

“Danny, are you—”

Danny sat up, planting his lips against Ethan’s and his arms around his neck to drag him down.

 _“Make love to me,_ ” Danny told him. “ _Now._ ”

Ethan only smiled, lifting Danny’s shirt over his head and settling him back on the bed, flat.  Licking hot stripes up his neck, he sucked a burning spot into his neck.

“As you wish,” he said with a grin.

Danny wasn’t exactly sure what he’d agreed to, but he fisted the sheets while Ethan undressed him, fighting not to try and hide the scars of his last relationship.  But Ethan was honest when he said he’d make love to him, laving each one with his tongue, sucking and biting red lines into his skin, spreading and coaxing the blush to the surface of Danny’s skin. Danny groaned and writhed under every one, damn near sobbing when Ethan rolled his boxers off and let his dick loose.

A low groan came from Ethan’s chest at the sight of it and another came at the first lick from base to tip.  Danny’s body tensed, his head thrown back and he screamed at the spike of pleasure and arousal through him.

“So responsive,” Ethan grinned. “I’m going to have so much fun taking you apart.”

Danny looked down at him wondering if he was dating a man or some sort of sex fiend.  Either way, he could only surrender because it was too good to ask him to stop. Ethan was skilled, sucking, licking, sliding up and down in slow deliberate motions, his tongue pressing against the vein, drawing Danny tiny step by step to the edge. There was no rush, no hurry, Ethan seemed content to suck his dick for hours before letting him come, but Danny just didn’t have the stamina for that and was pushing at Ethan’s head less than a few minutes in.

“ _Fuck, Ethan, I’m gonna come—“_

His voice broke as Ethan sucked extraordinarily hard and Danny came screaming Ethan’s name. When his body stopped shaking he realized that Ethan had flipped him over and propped his hips up. Kissing and licking up the back of his thighs. Kneading the flesh of his ass as Danny shook with his last orgasm.

“Ethan?” He asked almost frightened.

“ _Easy_ ,” he soothed, sliding a hand over his neck, through his hair, scratching his scalp with blunt fingernails. “I’ve got you. I’ve never done this to anyone before.”

Danny frowned, “What?”

“I’ve never bothered to take someone apart before,” Ethan told him. “No reason, no wish to… but you? I want to make a mindless mess of you. I want to wreck you, Danny. Will you let me?”

Danny’s eyes fluttered shut at the gentle stroke of Ethan’s hands through his hair. He nodded and fisted the pillow beneath his head. He was oddly comfortable and was sure that Ethan had made sure of that.

“Tell me to stop if you need to,” he murmured, kissing down his spine. “Promise? I want this to be good for you.”

“Promise,” Danny whispered and bit down on the pillow at the first pass of Ethan’s tongue across his ass, the tip of his tongue, catching at the rim as it passed.

Ethan paused for a second before administering another lick and sinking his tongue as far as it would go into Danny, probing gently but thoroughly. Danny groaned, twisting and pushing back against his face, seeking more of it. He licked and sucked until Danny was more than just spit slick and rutting against the stack of pillows beneath his hips. He could hear Danny talking, but it was nonsensical gibberish, mindless gibberish. Ethan slid a hand to cup the back of his neck as he continued to tongue Danny open. When Danny came, he slid one finger in, lube slick and curled it along Danny’s insides. His body jerked, but Danny’s conscious mind was gone, grounded only by Ethan’s hand on his neck while the other worked wicked magic in him.

“Danny,” Ethan called. “Are you alright?”

Danny nodded, his eyes burning from just how tender Ethan sounded, pressing open-mouthed, breathless kisses on his shoulder.

“You need a moment?”

He shook his head, “ _Please._ ”

Ethan agreed, sliding a condom on and slicking himself up. It was the good kind, water-based that kept people slick for hours and Ethan planned on hours with Danny, every time if he could manage it. At least this first time for sure, because he needed the reassurance and to get out of his own head for a while. Ethan was more than happy to oblige and slid in so slowly, Danny sobbed. Their fingers laced together beside Danny’s head, Ethan’s other hand holding him still.

“ _Danny_ ,” Ethan groaned as he bottomed out. “ _So perfect…_ ”

He started slow, rocking into Danny with shallow thrusts before Danny began to moan loudly, his body fully accepting and welcoming Ethan’s intrusion. It wasn’t fast, but it was deep and precise that Danny ‘s vision whited out at every hard thrust. He gripped Ethan’s hand so hard he was sure he was going to break it, but Ethan only held him still, kissed his neck, and told him that he was safe.

_I’ve got you, just let go, Danny. Just let go._

He did, slamming his eyes shut from the sight of oblivion as Ethan continued to thrust into him, fucking him through his orgasm and into the next one. He turned Danny over for the next one, placing his calves on his shoulders and leaning down to kiss whatever sense Danny had left out of his head and replace it with the surging of Ethan inside him and the rising tide of endorphins flooding his brain.

“ _Hold on to me, Danny,_ ” he told him, forcing Danny’s thighs around his waist. Danny did so and barely noticed, Ethan lifting him and cupping his ass with both hands, stroking up into him.

He was just holding on for dear life, a hand clenched in Ethan’s hair, the other around his shoulders. His orgasm felt like a hurricane and in the distance he could hear Ethan crying out even as he continued to thrust into him. They world shivered and slowly settled to stillness when he realized that he was shaking and so was Ethan, still kissing him and flooding him with all the feel good hormones in the world.

“Ethan…” he breathed as the other lay him back on the bed. “ _Fuck…_ ”

Ethan laughed, choppy and breathless, “Yeah… _Fuck._ ”

“You’ve got to teach me how to do that.”

Ethan snorted, “With some adjustments, I’m sure. I’m a good deal bigger than you, Danny.”

Danny almost missed it in the levity. Was Ethan agreeing to—

“Yes,” he said and kissed his nose. “But not today. I think sleep is in order.”

Danny could definitely agree with that.

*

When Erica calls him, he’s not sure what to expect. Her being downstairs ready to whisk him away to the Hale Family estate isn’t it. He packs a bag, per her instruction, and walks down the steps. The Camaro has been replaced by an FJ Cruiser and somehow he’s not surprised that Derek has multiple cars. Instead, he climbs into the car’s back seat. It’s the first time the whole pack won’t be together.

“Let the loner club commence!” Erica cheered and Stiles couldn’t help but laugh. Leave it to Erica to see the cheer in something so dreary.

They drive for a few hours until they arrive at the Hale House. Apparently, they’d gotten through the rebuilding just in time for this winter. Erica claims a room first, Derek and Stiles do as well and it isn’t long before Erica is demanding they go do things.

“We will not be sulking, sirs,” She informs them with a smile. “We’re going into the preserve for a picnic.”

She looks pointedly at Stiles and gestures to the kitchen, “Cook, Batman.”

“Yes, mistress,” he snarks and stalks to the kitchen.

There’s nothing fancy about the soup he makes to beat the chill, or the warm toasted sandwiches. Dessert is composed of cookies that are more brownie than anything all packed into the hot-cold cooler Erica has. They drive to the preserve bus station and let Derek carry the cooler as Erica gets their tickets and leads them towards their van.

“It feels like we’re going to prison,” Derek says, sitting on a bench across from Erica. Stiles takes the seat next to him

When the van starts he turns to look at Stiles, who’s only minorally jostled by the movement of the bus. Their legs bump together and he continues to look at Stiles, looking at his face. He looks like he could use sleep, slightly squinting. His eyebrows raise questioningly but without their usual snark.

“You look exhausted,” Derek tell him.

“You don’t look like  fresh cut daisies either.”

Erica frowned, “I thought you were sleeping when I called.”

“Depends on what you mean by sleeping. I was resurfacing from unconsciousness actually.”

Derek looked away then, Erica laughed, but Derek knew that he’d been without sleep for days and had finally crashed, probably so tired that his nightmares had held him hostage all night.

“What were you up doing?” Erica asked.

Stiles shrugged, “Being distracted and not being comforted.”

“Comforted?”

Stiles nodded, “I have horrible nightmares. Used to have someone that could talk me back to sleep, but that’s not an option. Would have called Scott, but waking him up is harder than avoiding a bullet in the middle of a shoot out. SO I got up and cooked and baked. I’ve been doing that for that last week or so more or less.”

“You should let Derek put you to sleep, give you a massage,” Erica said with a nod. “He’s got magic hands.”

Stiles snorted and Derek wanted to tell Erica not to talk about it. He’d given Stiles massages before and honestly, Stiles’s skin was more magical than his hands.”

About twenty minutes more of awkward conversation and skirting around the fact that Stiles and Derek knew a lot more about each other than either let on to Erica, and they were at the picnic spot. Erica laid out a large blanket by the water, effectively claiming the spot for them before helping unpack lunch. They talked about Derek’s business, Boyd, Stiles’s internship applications and anything else but why Stiles and Derek were so tired. They played Frisbee leading to Stiles tumbling down the slope and into the lake marking the perfect time for them to go home. Erica wrapped him up in the blanket and dried him off with the towels provided by the preserve rangers. On the ride back, Stiles sat shivering, tucked between Erica and Derek for warmth.

“Trust me to fall in.”

Erica snorted, “Someone had to, it’s usually Isaac.”

Stiles laughed because the though of the curly haired man soaking wet in the lake was almost too much to bear.

That night Erica heads to bed with a cup of hot chocolate. Stiles stays up, taking over the kitchen to make something that resemble Christmas dinner for the next day. Derek stumbles his way to the kitchen and watches him with an odd fascination. He knows that Stiles knows he’s there but hasn’t acknowledged him yet, busy with his measurements and trying to find something to say he’s sure.

Derek watches the intention shift and Stiles’s eyes go up to him an easy smile as Stiles leans against the counter.

“ _Derek_ ,” he said pitching his voice low.

“Don’t,” Derek said, desperately, worried. “Can we just… talk?”

Stiles blinked but leaned back regarding him before nodding slowly. A short truce, Christmas Eve wasn’t a time for war when they were both trying their best to be distracted from the reason they were in the Hale Estate, rebuilt, with only three people in the house.

“Want hot chocolate?”

Derek nodded, “Thanks.”

Stiles nods back, “Alcohol, yes?”

“Sure…”

“I could make egg nog,” He said with a grin and Derek snorted.

“Let’s stick to hot chocolate. Erica and eggnog have a history.”

Stiles nodded, he’d been informed. Derek watched him pull down ingredients including dark chocolate squares and heat the milk slowly.

“How are you applications going?  Did you get a call in from the restaurant you wanted?”

He nodded, “Yep, even got an in. They don’t usually do interns, but they’re going to do it this year. I’ve gotta be on my A game when I go in for my demo.”

“You’ll be fine,” Derek said with a nod. “If not, I’d hire you. At the very least I can trust it to be good.”

Stiles laughed, what better boost of confidence than a restaurant owner telling him his food was at least good, “Did you and your uncle figure it out?”

Derek nodded with a grin, “A new menu for Moonside as a test run, we’re still working on the others. Seeing how it works out. People seem to love it if the numbers are anything to go by.”

Stiles nodded going on to talk about their semesters, their classes, how Derek’s sister was doing in South America as Stiles divided the hot chocolate into two mugs. They moved to the couch to settle down and talk. They didn’t talk about sex, or anything dangerous, but talked about their latest book list, research and what they were planning to do.

“You’re going to have a busy summer,” Derek said with wide eyes. Between a restaurant internship for a few weeks, the police station, and theater camp to finish it out. Stiles nodded with a grin.

“I’m hoping so. I’m not good with sitting still.”

Derek remembered, even now Stiles drummed his fingers against the mug and tapped his feet.

“I feel like I should be singing Christmas carols…” Stiles said looking at the fake Christmas tree Erica had demanded they get years ago and left standing year round.  It was plugged up, filling the living room with a low light.

It was a romantic dimness, Derek realized, but neither of them commented on it or moved to turn on the light.

This was dangerous and it only became more dangerous when they fell asleep on the couch. Stiles curled up against Derek, half on top of him so they could share the couch. Derek didn’t remember moving and neither did Stiles, but when they woke up hours later with no sign of Erica having been up, they said nothing. Staring at each other for far too long, remembering the locker room and that night before Stiles pulled away, getting off the couch and leaving the room without a word.

Derek rolled to his feet to stop him, but caught himself. Isn’t this what he wanted?  For Stiles to give up? For him to walk away from him? The aching in his chest suggested the exact opposite, but he slumped back on the couch, still feeling the warmth of Stiles’s body against him.

Erica came bounding down the stairs screaming, “Merry Christmas Alpha!”

He looked at her wryly as she leapt over the side of the couch and landed next to him, “Where’s Batman?”

Derek shrugged, “Dunno.”

They heard the sound of running water and Erica grinned. Thank goodness, she’d hate to have to go get him herself.

Stiles had walked out of the living room, digging his nails into his palms to keep himself breathing as he went straight to the bathroom, stripped down and turned on the shower. He sunk to the bottom of the bathtub and bit back the sob, at least under the shower the tears weren’t visible and the redness in his face could be blamed on the heat.

Damn he was smart…

Damn he was stupid.

*

The whole pack was together for New Years, out at a club taking a group picture with all of them, including Stiles and Lydia. They left a space open for Danny and tagged it with his name. Ethan was kissing the space so it was obvious that there was only one person who could have fit there. After that, they all separated, classes were starting back up and with that Stiles was back at Peter’s apartment.

“Joachim,” he greeted. “I hope your break was restful.”

He shrugged, “Restful enough, you?”

“I worked, but my nephew was kind enough to bring me Christmas dinner the day after.”  
He winced, “Bit of a jerk.”

Peter grinned, “Eh, I did the same to him last year.”

“Never mind then,” Stiles said. “What are we working on today?”

“Cake.”

Stiles rolled up his sleeves, dropped his things at the dining room table and set his laptop up on the counter to record while looking over Peter’s notes. It was supposed to be something light enough for brunch but rich enough that it could be served with dinner as well. An indulgence of all the senses.

“Indulgence,” Stiles said mulling it over before moving to the cabinets. Pastries wouldn’t work, a very light cake might though with the right sort of icing.

They worked, talking brainstorming before deciding on a course of action. They’d filled a pan and were prepared to get it out when Peter heard the key in the door.

“Looks like you’ll get to meet my nephew this time.”

“The one that irks you?” Stiles said with a laugh before opening the oven.

“Peter,” Derek called out carrying the records from the restaurant. “I’m not sure what you changed, but please don’t change it back. Looks like the numbers doubled since last month.”

Peter laughed as Derek set the files down, following the smell to the kitchen, “Come meet the man responsible.”

Derek rounds the corner to see Stiles pulling a pan out of the oven. He froze before he could get the pan out, startled by the sound of Derek’s voice. Derek forgot to breathe seeing him stand there, eye wide. Looking between Peter and Stiles’s heat flushed face, he said nothing. Stiles glances between Peter and Derek.

“Uhm—”

“Derek, this is Joachim. Joachim, this is Derek.”

“ _Stiles?_ ” Derek choked.

“Derek…”

He looks between Peter and Stiles and abruptly turned around and escaped out the door. Peter almost groans, but somehow refrains from it. Stiles stood perfectly still, stunned in the middle of the kitchen before pulling the pan out and setting it on top of the stove.

“You knew,” Stiles said.

Peter rolled his eyes, “Of course I knew. _Stiles_ , who do you think serves as his sounding board? Certainly not Cora in god knows where South America.”

“All this time…” Stiles said. “Why didn’t you say something, a warning anything—”

“It wouldn’t have made a stitch of difference, you’re both stupid,” Peter said rounding the bar and heading up the stairs.

Stiles followed him to the bottom of the winding stairs, “You could have said anything Peter!”

“You’re the one who uses a fake name Why should I be the one to tell him what your real name is?”

Stiles groaned, “This isn’t about the name Peter. Why didn’t you tell me that Derek was your nephew? That _my_ Derek was your nephew? Why not tell him that your student was his… his…”

“His what?” Peter asked over the rustle of books. “I don’t think boyfriend would have covered it. Besides how could you possibly think Peter _Hale_ of Triskele wasn’t connected to Derek _Hale_ owner of several restaurants?”

“We aren’t dating,” Stiles stressed. “And he never said anything about Triskele being one of the restaurants!”

“Because he’s terrified of you and you’re too stubborn to let him go,” Peter called. “I don’t see why you don’t just fuck him senseless again. That’s what got you both into this mess… though I had my part to play.”

Stiles shook his head. When Peter described his nephew, it wasn’t at all like the Derek he knew as part of the alpha pack… but now that he thought about it.

“He’s terribly romantic, profoundly narcissistic…” Peter recites his own words as he came down the stairs to reach the bottom step.

Stiles stood frozen in the middle of the loft, searching through his memories of Derek.

“But only in appearance,” Stiles said, remembering. “That’s what you said.”

“Yep, used to be a heart on his sleeves, now he’s hiding behind so much crap he doesn’t even know if it’s fake or not.”

Stiles almost smiled, at least he was right on that end though everything else seemed to be wrong and mixed up in his head.

 “So what happened? What changed him?” He asked, swallowing thickly around the words.

Peter gives him a look, “From deeply romantic to profoundly narcisstic in appearance?”

“Yes.”

“Well that’s a lot of things. What’s changing him back however… that’s one thing.”

“Me?” He mouthed in confusion, too afraid to speak the words aloud.

He nods slightly, “Yeah.”

Stiles turns, his eyes flickering through it all. The past few months and the drain he could see Derek spiraling down, the haunted look in his eyes… The night of Christmas Eve coming to the forefront of his mind.

“Well now he’s just spiraled in completely the opposite direction.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“But have you noticed who he’s been dragging to bed?”

Stiles shook his head, he’d been doing his best to ignore the fact that he was taking anyone to bed that wasn’t him.

Peter hummed, “Pale, dark hair, big brown eyes,…sound familiar.”

His eyes grew impossibly large, _Me._

 _“_ Derek’s developed a type.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

Stiles blinked, refusing to grin, even as his cheeks heated. Instead, he cleared his throat and began whipping up the icing he had in mind until was soft. He knew Peter was wearing that knowing look, but he didn’t care.

Derek was sleeping with the ghost of him. What a fucking ego boost to come at just the right time. Hell he’d been ready to give upHe looked at Peter after adding a swirl of icing and sliding the plate to him, “You can have this one, but not my hot chocolate recipe.”

Peter only grinned, “I’ll get it from you some day.”

Stiles snorted, “Not on your life.”

*

Derek went to Erica’s apartment rather than his own; he needed somewhere that Stiles hadn’t been. She opened with a knowing smile.

“Uncle Peter called me. Come on in.”

Derek hung his head and trudged in, sitting on her couch with a deep breath. He wasn’t sure if he ws just ashamed or confused, overrun with emotion and terrified.

“I knew there was something between you two,” Erica said with a nod as she sat down. “Didn’t realize how big of a something.”

“Erica,” he breathed. “I don’t know what to do.”

She shook her head and swatted him over the head, hard. He cried out glaring at her.

“That jog your thought processes?”

“That _hurt.”_

“It’s in the past though.”

Derek gave her a flat look as her face remained completely neutral and shook his head.

“No.”

“It’s true.”

“No.”

“Don’t deny the wisdom of Disney.”  
He groaned, “ _No._ ”

“Yep,” she said. “You keep letting the past hurt you and you’ll never have anything for the future.”

Derek groaned and hung his head, “Why am I friends with you?”

She played with a curl, “Because you know I’m right. Lydia thinks so too.”

“You and Lydia talk?”

“Of course,” she said. “It’s nice not to be the only vagina in the all dick club.”

Derek told his eyes with a sigh, why were they friends again? She leaned over to sling her arms around his shoulder.

“Seriously, papa wolf,” Erica said. “Derek… you want to be happy but you keep making yourself unhappy because you think you deserve it, then you get depressed because you hate that you deserve it and make yourself worse and it’s… well it’s a vicious cycle. You let yourself be happy and you freaked and threw yourself the other way. They wouldn’t want you living like this.”

Derek’s throat worked and he shook his head. Damn her for pushing his buttons.

“Meet him for lunch, tell him the truth, and see what he has to say _before_ you decide he doesn’t want you. Stiles put in a whole lot of work into this plot, a whole lot of pain too. He was obviously willing to try and figure you out, why not let him?”

Derek hung his head and leaned against her. This was why he was friends with her. This was why Erica got away with so much.  He nodded.

“Not right now,” Erica said. “When you’re ready.”

He nodded again and he fell asleep that way, leaning against her, too damn tired to do much else and if he was going to get through this.  He woke up with his head in her lap, her hand in his hair and her voice soft.

“…yeah. Of course, yeah.”

Derek moved, looking up at her before sitting up. She smiled at him.

“Better?” She asked.

He nodded and groaned. There were a million reasons why he shouldn’t have passed out her couch. A billion more why he was heading to Peter’s in the first place. All the paperwork was still in his laptop bag. Where the hell was it? In his car? Fuck.

“Tell me how it goes,” she said with a smile. “I’ve got ice cream, booze, and hugs on tap.”

He grinned at her and nodded before heading to the door. He locked it behind him and headed up the stairs to his own apartment. A shower and food, he felt almost human. Pulling on a light t-shirt and jeans he took a breath and opened a black text message to the number he hadn’t called or texted in months.

When he pressed send, he offered a prayer up to whoever was watching over him not to fuck him over this time.

_Just this once, please?_


	13. The Winner Takes It All

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you have to lose to win.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What sort of goodies could possible be waiting?
> 
> Wrapping up the lines of the story and all that. Thanks for bearing with me all this time and stay tuned for the next Sterek Media Story. 
> 
> I will really try to post one story at a time, but I can't guarantee that.

_We need to talk._

There’s no explanation, no follow up and it sort of freaks him out when he sees it. Between dealing with the panic of Danny’s ex going stalker-psycho and preparing for his demo, Stiles can’t do anything to keep his heart from racing.  I mean it was a pretty unambiguous summons for his presence, but ambiguous in intent. Was this the part where Derek finally punched his lights out for being a persistent little shit?

Stiles really hoped not.

He hadn’t heard from or seen Derek for weeks, not since he realized that Peter was Derek’s Uncle and Derek had realized that Stiles was Peter’s prodigy. He knew that the other pack members had talked to Derek, but Stiles had been left out of that. He’d been distracting himself by comforting Danny and fighting as hard as he could with police protocol to getting him the most protection possible. As far as he could tell, it had been working… until now.

 _Fuck_ , he thought gripping the phone and pacing a shallow track in the floor of his bedroom.

They’d already started the second semester and all of his interviews were next weekend. The ambiguous text was officially the last thing his mind could take before the shaking set in. His hands twitched for the pill bottle, tempting Stiles for one more dose of his anxiety meds, but he stilled his hands and paced. He hated medication and when he felt the urge to take it that meant things were getting bad.  The fact that he still didn’t have a thing to wear for his interviews and was freaking out  made it no better. His usual default would be to borrow Scott’s clothes, because honestly the things he wanted to do would work out better in jeans and t-shirts than button ups. That plan was made in valid by Lydia who threatened to chop his dick off and feed it to him if he borrowed Scott’s clothes one more time.

_Use some of that scholarship and work money and buy something from a department store. I swear Stiles I will murder you if you fuck this up._

In general, he tried to stay on Lydia’s good side, but he had no idea what to buy for himself. A suit he imagined, but with his luck he’d pick something out that made him look like an idiot rather than a young professional.

Aiden and Lydia were well on their way to a blissful relationship, now that Aiden had let himself open up. Danny had been relegated to taking up semi-permanent residence with Ethan while the paperwork for a restraining order and the like were still in the works. Despite all the reasons to be severely freaked out, Danny seemed to be quite happy with riding on the back of Ethan’s bike and presumably being fucked out of his mind nearly every night. Stiles bet that the sex had a large part to do with it along with Ethan’s need for public and blatant shows of affection.

They were rivaling Scott and Kira in their cuteness.

Erica was blissfully wrapped up in Boyd’s arms, not mellowing out in the slightest but she seemed more content, glowing even. The tall, dark, and quiet man was good for her and took the pack’s threats all in stride with a brilliant smile. At the very least he was as head over heels for Erica as she was for him. Isaac and Allison had survived Christmas with her father and Stiles was pretty sure that they were going to start fucking soon. Scott and Kira were wrapped up in their sickeningly fairytale made real romance and everything felt sort of… normal with the exception of Derek who’d seemed to have fallen off Stiles’s world. 

Until today.

He’d contemplated saying he was busy, to buy some time to pull himself together even though Derek hadn’t given him a specific time or date. It would be childish, but—

His phone chimed again.

His stomach flipped and he found himself inviting Derek to coffee that afternoon before his brain could stop him.

Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.

Derek was already there when he arrived. He hadn’t seen Derek’s Camaro, but since he recognized the FJ Cruiser in the parking lot, he figured that the Camaro was otherwise occupied. He waited a moment before getting out of the jeep, preparing himself to sink into his character if he needed. He hadn’t made his final call on Derek yet, but he was pretty sure he’d be making it now and whether he walked away from the encounter, internally in pieces, or with his fingers interlaced with Derek’s he would bow out gracefully.

Derek saw him when he pulled up, watching as he took breaths and got ready to exit the jeep. Tracked him with his eyes across the street and stood to meet Stiles at the cash register. He paid for his coffee, much to Stiles’s embarrassment, and led him to the corner of the coffee shop that didn’t reflect sound and would give them the most privacy. Upon sitting, Stiles realized that it was their corner of this particular coffee shop— _fuck._

“How ya—”

“I was wrong,” Derek cut him off. Stiles clamped his mouth shut and waited for Derek to continue. “About a lot of things… and I’m sorry. For turning you into a monster essentially…turning you into me. Becoming the one thing that I never wanted to become… the one thing I hated about myself…”

When Stiles only continued to look at him, Derek tightened his grip on his cup, trying to still his nerves and ease his heart into an even pace. But like the words and feelings, it’s tripping over itself. The voice in the back his head that sounds like Kate is whispering _You’ll never be good enough._

He reminds himself that has to try and either way, he’d brought it upon himself.

“Will you let me tell you?” Derek asked and Stiles nodded slowly.

Derek took a long moment to close his eyes and steady his voice before telling him about Kate. How beautiful he thought she was and how in love he thought he was. How she used him for sex and information--how she burned down the family house while everyone was still in it, including him. He and Cora only got out because they weren’t in their bedrooms, but the basement studying. Peter had been out of town.

They’d fallen asleep there and woke up to the ceiling on fire and screaming from the floors above. Kate had broken in, nailed all the doors shut, doused the house in accelerant and gasoline and lit it from outside. She’d been standing outside watching the house burn, listening to the sounds of desperation and fear inside, when he and Cora had escaped from the basement. The trap door had been old, weak enough to break through with enough force. Choking on the smoke and trying to get back into the house, screaming for their family, they hadn’t noticed her standing in the yard basking in her blazing glory. The doors had been bolted from the inside, nailed shut from the outside. Derek remembers pulling and pulling on the thick ply wood that nailed front and back door shut, how they’d bled and he’d yelled, promising that they were coming. The windows blew out in a rain of glass from the upper stories, but they’d been nailed shut too. He’d seen Laura beating at the thick metal frame, screaming and coughing, looking at him from below until the accelerant bombs had gone off and she was blown back. There was no chance for her or any of them as all the other windows exploded in the same way. He pulled the water hose free from the side of the house only to find the water off.  The nearest fire hydant was down at the end of the drive way, too far to be of use to them.

He’d raced around the front of the house while Cora went to the tool shed to find something to pry the windows open. He saw her smoking a cigarette and watching it burn.

 _OH Derek,_ she’d said looking at him like some impossible thing. _I didn’t expect you out here._

Begging for her phone, to help—anything, she had only laughed at him. That same sneering. Derisive laugh she gave him when she pinned him down and rode his dick whenever she felt like he’d earned it. She told him he was a good lay and so _willing_ , but pathetic to think that there was anything more to their relationship than sex. Pathetic to think that she could have really given a damn about him.

_I had to get in Derek and you were good for that. Sweet Derek, who just wanted attention…You’re a dog, good enough to chain and the occasional scratch behind the ears, but nothing more than that. You’d never be good enough for anything real, naieve little Derek._

When he’d asked, if she had done this, how could she have done this she tossed her head back and laughed.

_Me? I just set the light, you prepared all the kindling._

He’d been so shocked to the core by her words that he hadn’t felt her ram a knife into his side. Just staring as he fell back and she crouched over him telling him that she was going to have to drag him back inside and set another fire. But Cora had come back and swung a shovel into the side of her head, knocking her off him and unconscious. She was sobbing, telling him to hold on, pressing against the wound, telling him not to leave her. But Derek had barely heard her, the sound of his family screaming, choking on smoke, and burning had filled his ears and the guilt.

“I wanted to die,” Derek said. “But… I couldn’t… I couldn’t leave Cora. I couldn’t let Kate get away…and Cora wouldn’t let me.”

She’d done all the first aid she could, calling the police about the fire, about Kate, about Derek, frantic hysterical sobbing for help. He remembered waking up in the hospital and Cora was there. He’d woken up again to find that she wasn’t and that Peter was the only one there waiting for him.

There was a pressure on his hand and he looked to see Stiles’s warm finger holding his hand and squeezing gently. A shuddering breath later he carried on.

“It took a long time to just… move again after that… Then Peter took me to New York with him… Took custody of me. Cora left before the ceremony and everything and she didn’t come back, transferring schools to South America. I haven’t seen her or heard from her since then. I stayed with Peter to deal with everything…As…”

“Penitence?”

“Punishment,” he croaked. “To have to face the fact that they weren’t there, to deal with the fact that I helped erase them from the world… to have to fill their shoes because they weren’t there…”

Stiles bit his lip but nodded and squeezed his hand.

“The sex thing was… the same. I was angry at being used and lied to. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, but I needed the feeling of control… but it spiraled out of control and I became…”

“Insincere?”

“Yeah.”

Stiles laughed at that, a short bark of a laugh that made Derek wince. Kate had laughed at him even when they were having sex, she’d laughed at him. Done things to him that he didn’t really like or felt comfortable with… made him feel helpless.

“Derek, you don’t know how to be insincere. You dated me for almost a year and us having sex wasn’t planned. You can’t look me in the eye and tell me that shit was planned.”

“It wasn’t,” he admitted quietly.

He’s so withdrawn and remorseful, Stiles wants to pet him like a sad and apologetic puppy. There was a darkness creeping into those green-hazel eyes that Stiles wanted to fight with everything he had in him. So he slid forward in his seat and cupped Derek’s jaw in his hand, forcing Derek to look at him.

“Never insincere,” Stiles said. “You wanted me. You _want_ me. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be happy after they’re gone. There’s nothing wrong with healing.”

His jaw trembled in his hand and Stiles wants to hug him so badly it’s killing him, but Derek sits back, out of his reach and looks down at the table.

“I just,” he said. “Wanted to tell you that you’ve won.”

Stiles frowned as Derek smiled sadly, “I’m officially off the board now.”

Stiles blinked, “What? What do you mean?”

Derek gave a half shrug while sliding out of the booth. Stiles had the distinct feeling that Derek was making an escape.

“I’ve got a business to run, an internship program to manage, school—It’s time I stop distracting myself and just be for a little while. So, thank you, Stiles. I’ll see you around.”

Stiles’s jaw dropped as Derek made quick work of the distance between their table and the front door. What the fuck was that? Had he not been listening to Stiles’s rant? Had he not grasped the full point of all of this?

 _Oh fuck no,_ he thought, getting up more angry and affronted, butterflies in his stomach and his emotions reeling. He knows for sure his face is red. He’s not entirely angry but confused beyond reason.

“That’s it?” Stiles yelled across the street at him.

Derek stopped mid step and swallowed, turning around to look at Stiles. He doesn’t put his shades on,  he doesn’t hide from that gaze of rage. He owes Stiles that much as the most recent good thing he’s ruined to date.

 It’s a sad smile, a real one as he nods slowly, “That’s it.”

“You’re a fucking idiot!”

Derek’s stomach clenches as Stiles strikes a path towards him, he moves to get in to the car but Stiles stops him with a hand on the door and a low growl. Derek didn’t dare move feeling Stiles too close and not close enough behind him.

“You’re a goddamn liar, if you think that’s all you have to say to me.”

Derek swallowed, “What do you want from me, Stiles?”

“The fucking truth!” Stiles yelled, pulling him to spin him around and look at him.

Derek’s almost dizzy with it. Since when was Stiles so strong?

“You listen to me goddamnit,” Stiles yelled. “I did not go through all this. We did not go through all this for a fucking apology and a see you around.”

Derek opened his mouth and Stiles slaps his hand over it.

“Shut the fuck up and let me talk damn it,” he growled. “I don’t want a fucking apology. I don’t want you to say all of that, to admit, and continue existing the way you have been goddamn it. I want answers. I want the truth.”

“Answers?”

“The months we spent talking… that night…They meant something didn’t they? More than just a lay. More than just friends.”

Derek nodded and he can barely breathe around the trembling rage and desperation in Stiles’s voice.

“Fucking _say_ it.”

“Yes,” he said, his voice a little more raw than he would have liked. Fuck, it shouldn’t have been that hard to admit it.

“Why did you push me away if it meant something?”

“Because…” he breathed out. “Because I didn’t think it would ever mean anything to you and that thought that I was nothing to you would have killed me…so I left, I ran.”

“I meant what I said… I want you.”

“But all this…”

“You didn’t turn me into a monster, Derek. I wasn’t sleeping with people to get back at you in my own twisted way. I was sleeping with people so you wouldn’t be able to ignore me.”

“What?”

“If I’d rolled over and moped, you’d be able to ignore me, turn a blind eye. Which you did, forced yourself to look right past me. Sleeping around, getting into the alpha pack’s circles, putting myself in your line of sight, entering your world… that’s the only way you were going to get it.”

“What?”

“And it worked didn’t it?” He nodded, “See how fucked up your mental processes are?”

“Stiles…” he practically sobbed, turning his head, but Stiles’s hand is on his jaw, gentle and forcing him to look at him.

“I want _you_. All of you. Every last part of you from your fucking smile and those eyes to the grumpiest darkest parts of you, alright? I won and goddamn it I want my fucking prize, understand?”

Derek nodded, his eyes burning as Stiles yanked him down to kiss him. It’s less finesse and more words that couldn’t have been said before. It’s harsh and desperate and shakes him to depths of himself he didn’t know he had. Derek’s knees do give out this time, but Stiles holds onto him by his shirt, refusing to let him escape as he follows Derek to the ground, kissing him with all the pent up frustration and rage of the months of this game and waking up alone. Derek is on his knees before Stiles pulls back.

His green hazel eyes are needy and blown wide with arousal. He’s as breathless as Stiles feels as he blows out through his nostrils, frustrated pants.

“Now you owe me… kisses and sex. You owe me dates,” Stiles says. “And sex.  And affection. Lots of holy shit I’m trying to brand your soul with my name sex. And a lot of I love yous.”

Derek blinked floored but relaxed slowly, seeing no lie in Stiles’s eyes, just expectation.

“Get to making good on that bro.”

“Yeah,” Derek breathed. “I can do that.”

Every way and any way Stiles wanted it. Derek manages to push himself off the ground and sit in the driver’s seat, his legs parted around Stiles hips as Stiles leans into him.

“For your reference,” Stiles said, bumping their noses gently. “I’m pretty much demi-sexual. I wouldn’t have slept with you if it didn’t mean something. Sleeping with random people was a test on my acting ability.”

“But—”

Stiles shuts him up with another kiss, wrapping his arms around his neck and holding him. It’s gentle and possessive, a shyness Derek didn’t think he was capable of anymore, considering, but there it was. Hesitant and so open that it made his heart clench. Stiles is flushed, his pupils blown and won’t look at him when he pulls away. Derek feels a smile creeping on to his lips.

“You can still blush?” Derek growled. “Do you still blush everywhere?”

“Do you?” Stiles quipped.

“I don’t know…” Derek said slowly. “Do you have time to find out?”

Stiles grinned and bit his lip, “Yours or mine?”

“Mine,” Derek said firmly.

Stiles smiled and nodded. Derek had never had sex with anyone at his place, in his bed. It was his ultimate sanctuary. It was warming that Derek was getting on board with Stiles carving out a space for himself there the same way that Derek had.

“I’ll meet you there.” He said and kissed Derek again.

Derek watched Stiles climb into the jeep before texting Isaac not to come home tonight.

 _About fucking time,_ Isaac replied. _I’m telling Erica._

Derek really didn’t care before he slid his seatbelt on and righted himself in the car. He pulled away from the curb with an urgency that astounded him. He’d never been this excited for sex before. Barely parking the cruiser in its spot and envying the fact that Stiles seemed to have more control than he did. He met Stiles at his door and tugged him out, catching him before he face planted into the cement. Once the door was locked, Stiles was practically running to keep up with Derek’s quick strides towards the elevator.

He pushed Stiles against the wall roughly and slanted his mouth of his, lifting him up to settle his weight on Derek’s hips and grind into against the wall as the elevator moved.

“ _Derek, we’re in an elev--”_

Derek silenced him with his tongue in his mouth and a low whine of impatience and need. Fuck, he’d been thinking about getting Stiles naked, beneath him, on him, _in_ him for months, keeping the images at bay with midnight flings and work. He was pretty sure if he had to wait any longer he’d fucking explode.

“I love you,” he growled, taking a hard bite into Stiles’s shoulder as the elevator stopped. Derek carried him, stumbling through the hallway until they reached his apartment door and Derek could slam him against the door while fumbling for his keys. Stiles’s nervous hand shaking and sliding over his neck, into his shirt, trying to feel as much of Derek as he possibly could was not helping with higher brain function.

“Get the fucking door open, or I swear I will ride you in this hallway,” Stiles huffed and Derek had to bite his lip to keep from coming as he licked the shell of his ear and sucked on an ear lobe.

His body rocking against his, grinding—rutting against him.

When the door finally relented to Derek’s fumbling, they nearly toppled to the floor. He had to kick the door closed and lock all three locks while Stiles tugged off Derek’s shirt and then his own. He shuddered at feeling of skin against skin and Stiles’s wicked fingers in his hair.

“Going to fuck me.”

“Yes.”

“Tongue me. Wreck me.”

“ _Yes_.”  
“Let me ruin you.”

“ _Fuck yes._ ”

And he can’t understand anymore as it’s all just heated words and promises that they’ll both be blacking out tonight. Another chance at that night to get it right this time. To go all the way for both of them. Before he realized it they were on his bed and Stiles was wiggling out of his pants. Derek dropped his jeans and crawled on to the bed after him. Feverish hand slid over his shoulders as he prowled after Stiles who crawled backward up the bed. His eyes bright with arousal and his cock hard. Derek caught his ankle with a grin and held him still to lick a hot line up Stiles’s cock.

Stiles’s head rolled back with a loud moan, high and desperate.

“Love you,” he said, kissing up Stiles thighs. “Love you. Love you. Love you.”

Stiles writhed beneath him, not sure where his head was supposed to be and where it was with Derek licking his way up Stiles thighs, sucking him down until he could feel Derek swallow around him. His tongue on him, teasing him, his mouth sucking hot red splotches into his skin, his stubble scratching deliciously in his mouth’s wake and Derek’s hands stroking over his skin—fuck, fuck, fuck—

He whined when Derek flipped him over and stopped touching him, but it was choked when Derek shoved his tongue into him  in one long thrust that has Stiles scrambling for stability. It doesn’t stop there or even minutes later when he’s coming embarrassingly fast. It doesn’t stop until Derek’s decided he’s slick enough and open enough to finger him with slow, skilled strokes. Everything’s too sensitive and if Stiles didn’t know better, he’d swear that he’d regained his virginity just to lose it to Derek again because goddamn it he shouldn’t feel this strung out.

He’d had sex with at least fifty different women and one man. He’d fingered himself and jerked off until he couldn’t move with just the thought of Derek on his mind, but _this_ was more than that. As if his body had erased all of those touches  for just this… just Derek’s patient, skilled hands sliding over his flushing skin and that voice that whispered, “Stiles, are you okay?”

He almost sobs the yes as Derek slides into him with a groan, “ _Fucking hell, Stiles. How are you so damn tight?_ ”

He wants to tell him that Derek is the only person to ever fuck him; wants to tell him that his own fingers weren’t enough to ever stretch him out the way Derek’s cock did; wants to tell him about every thought he’d had since that night about Derek, about what he’d done to him, but he can’t. His voice has deserted him as Derek grips his shoulder and pulls him back on his cock to meet his thrust and stays still, waiting for Stiles to adjust.

Derek felt the shaking start as soon as he’d bottomed out, just like then, but different filled with the unfinished business of that night and the months in between, the longing and aching, but Stiles’s body feels just like it did then and Derek swears by feeling alone that he’d never fucked Stiles before. He wants to tell him that he thinks they’ve entered some sort of biological time rift because it’s the nerdy sort of thing that he thinks sometimes… the nerdy sort of thing that Stiles loved about him.

“You take it so well,” Derek said. “So deep, so good, Stiles. You’re amazing.”

His heart quivers at the sound of those words, phantasmal and real in his ears and on his tongue, but then Stiles is pressing back and his mind comes back to the task at hand, watching Stiles work himself open on his cock. The sight along is going to kill him.

“Shit, Stiles you’re going to be the death of me.”

Stiles shakes his head and lets Derek push and hold him down as Derek strokes into him, slow deep thrusts to open Stiles up further.

“ _Tell me when,”_ Derek said.

“Now,” Stiles breathed. “Please Derek, fuck me.”

And he did, snapping his hips forward faster, with enough force to shake the headboard and slide them both up the mattress. Stiles reaches out to press his palms against the headboard and opens his mouth in a silent scream as Derek pounds into him, forcing him down and tangling their fingers together. It doesn’t take long for Stiles to come untouched and so blissed out that he can’t think of anything but returning the favor.

When Derek pulls out and falls to one side of him, Stiles pushes him down with a smile. Derek swallows thickly, his pupils blown wide in the darkness, smelling of sweat and sex. It’s his turn, he knows that. He didn’t finger himself when he jerked off, somehow holding that from himself, but he knew Stiles had no such reservations. Derek was present enough to hand him the lube he kept in his bedside drawer and grip the sheets, swearing that he’d let Stiles in. That he’d let himself be worked over as much as Stiles wanted, just like then and different.

His fingers are lube-slick when they slide behind his balls and circle his hole. It’s relieving and a little frightening how much his body wants it still. There are no words to describe exactly how prominent Stiles’s capable hands, slightly calloused from guitar strings, scarred with knife knicks and other injuries and beautiful, were in his wet dreams. No words for how it felt for that first finger to slide slowly into him, testing the give as Stiles’s mouth sucked on his balls, coaxing him to relax.

He groaned, his eyes fluttering as his body adjusted to the first finger, then the second, and the third. His hips twitched and he grunted when Stiles found that spot, the same one he’d fumbled over and drove Derek crazy with need. His hands are as unexperienced now as they were then. He’s frustrated and happy with that fact, it meant that Stiles hadn’t done this to anyone else. It was just for Derek.

“Am I hurting you?” Stiles asked. “Are you okay?”

He sobs and nods, those words just as tender as they had been and more maddening, weighty than before. Stiles fingers work slowly to open him, his mouth working over his thighs and cock as Derek fists the sheets and prays for strength.

 _Fuck,_ it shouldn’t feel like this. They’d done this before, but he feels just as exposed as he did then. Would it always be like this? Always this intense? Always this good?

Always this… right?

He whined, a stuttered breath coming from him when Stiles removed his fingers and mouth to slick his cock up and wrap his clean hand around the back of Derek’s neck. He waited until Derek met his gaze and nodded shakily before pushing in. Stiles bit his lip watching the feeling flicker over his face even as it rushed through his own veins. Green hazel eyes  flickered wet and emotional as his eyelids fluttered from the maelstrom of pleasure, but he kept his eyes open until Stiles was full in him.

He nodded again and opened his eyes when he was ready for Stiles to move. Where Derek had focused on giving Stiles the sense freedom, fucking him out of his mind, Stiles had a different agenda. Each stroke punctuated by a deep kiss, slow and deliberate with Derek’s ankles on his shoulders. When Derek tried to turn away, for breath or chance to collect himself, his shield and armor, Stiles forced his head back easily or followed his lips or licked down his neck, thrusting deeper and harder until Derek turned back.

It was maddening the way Stiles stroked into him as if trying to erase anyone before him and write his name beneath Derek’s skin.

“Stiles, don’t stop. So damn good…” He said, high and breathy, his eyes half closed as Stiles rolled his hips and stroked into Derek so deeply he was sure Stiles was fucking his soul.

 _Mind, heart and soul if that’s what it takes,_ his words echoing in Derek’s ears as Stiles kissed him slow, deep and perfect, murmuring things that made his insides quake.

_So perfect._

_Open just for me._

_Want to own you, Derek._

_I love you, Derek._

Stiles slid his hand into Derek’s hair as his hips began to stutter. Derek was close and he was pretty sure he wouldn’t last much longer either between kissing that sinful mouth and stroking into him, his sensory faculties were at their breaking point.

“Not yet,” Stiles crooned as Derek’s breath hitched, his hips stuttered and thrusted forward to meet Stiles’s thrust. “Not yet.”

Derek whimpered in frustration, his head tossed back, his lips scoring a hot, angry line in his bottom lip. Stiles nipped at his jaw and sucked his lip from beneath his teeth before making their eyes meet.

“Look at me,” he said, gently. “Derek, let me see you.”

Derek gives him a pleading look, but Stiles won’t let him escape, holding him still, holding his gaze because he knows how much Derek needs to see him too. Needs to know that he isn’t the only one falling apart and scared.

“It’s okay,” Stiles whispered. “Me too.”

He grips Stiles’s waist, feeling the muscles work as he fucks Derek. Pleasure and chaos are sparkling through his veins, up his spine, into his eyes and the whole world is blotted out. No sound, no pain, no words, no past, no present: nothing for a few precious moments, there is nothing but the high and the first thing he sees is Stiles, panting, smiling looking at him. The first thing he feels is Stiles’s hands on his face, stroking across the stubble and up over his forehead, through his hair, soothingly. He smells Stiles and him all mingled together in his sheets with sweat, sex, and pleasure. The first thing he hears is Stiles’s voice.

“Thank you for letting me take you apart, too” Stiles said kissing his forehead. “You’re amazing.”

Derek’s are glossy and wet and the tears come without him meaning for them to. Stiles only smiled and wiped them away, pressing gentle kisses over his eyelids before kissing him slow and languid, rocking into Derek’s body until they both can’t stay awake a second longer.      

*

When they emerge from Derek’s bedroom days later, there’s no one there. They shower, get dressed and promise to meet up for dinner. It’s the week after Stiles’s interviews are over that they all show up at Derek’s apartment including Scott and Kira to share the news that the alpha pack’s members have all been “mated off” as Erica says. Scott can’t believe that Stiles and Derek are together until he walks in and sees them practically making out on the couch. Stiles is in Derek’s lap, the other’s hand on his hip and sliding up the back of his shirt.

“And this is why I’m Batman,” Stiles said, seeing Scott’s surprised face in the doorway as Derek licked his way up Stiles’s neck.

Scott shook his head, “Only you would be able to make that work.”

Stiles grinned and kissed Derek sweetly.

“No compromise from you,” Erica said with a grin. “Thank god.”

Stiles looked at Derek who looked at him a soft look in his eyes that makes Stiles grin.

“With a prize like this? How could I compromise?”

“Go hard or go home?” Derek offered, nipping on Stiles’s neck.

Stiles shook his head, “Winner takes it all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading everyone! Huge thanks for comments and suggestions. Do know that I do actually read them and I'm working on revising it. Fingers crossed there will be more beta'ing for the next story.


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